In _Social Statics_, the aim of which is essentially ethical, this analogy is pointed out incidentally, to enforce certain ethical considerations; and is there obviously suggested partly by the definition of life which {137} Coleridge derived from Schelling, and partly by the generalizations of physiologists there referred to (chap. xxx. §§. 12, 13, 16). Excepting this incidental agreement, however, the contents of _Social Statics_ are so entirely antagonistic to the philosophy of M. Comte, that, but for the title, the work would never, I think, have raised the remembrance of him—unless, indeed, by the association of opposites.[21] And now let me point out that which really _has_ exercised a profound influence over my course of thought. The truth which Harvey’s embryological inquiries first dimly indicated, which was afterwards more clearly perceived by Wolff, and which was put into a definite shape by Von Baer—the truth that all organic development is a change from a state of homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity—this it is from which very many of the conclusions which I now hold, have indirectly resulted. In _Social Statics_, there is everywhere manifested a dominant belief in the evolution of man and of society. There is also manifested the belief that this evolution is in both cases determined by the incidence of conditions—the actions of circumstances. And there is further, in the sections already referred to, a recognition of the fact that organic and social evolutions, conform to the same law. Falling amid beliefs in evolutions of various orders, everywhere determined by natural causes (beliefs {138} again displayed in the _Theory of Population_ and in the _Principles of Psychology_); the formula of Von Baer set up a process of organization. The extension of it to other kinds of phenomena than those of individual and social bodies, is traceable through successive stages. It may be seen in the last paragraph of an essay on “The Philosophy of Style,” published in October, 1852; again in an essay on “Manners and Fashion,” published in April, 1854; and then, in a comparatively advanced form, in an essay on “Progress: its Law and Cause,” published in April, 1857. Afterwards, there came the recognition of the need for modifying Von Baer’s formula by including the trait of increasing definiteness; next the inquiry into those general laws of force from which this universal transformation necessarily results; next the deduction of these from the ultimate law of the persistence of force; next the perception that there is everywhere a process of Dissolution complementary to that of Evolution; and, finally, the determination of the conditions (specified in the foregoing essay) under which Evolution and Dissolution respectively occur. The filiation of these results is, I think, tolerably manifest. The process has been one of continuous development, set up by the addition of Von Baer’s law to a number of ideas that were in harmony with it.