Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of DiscussionsSpencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further
expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed analysis
aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the
grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the
stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in
cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more
and more remotely representative. It is undeniable that intelligence
ascends from those simple perceptions in which consciousness is occupied in
localizing and classifying sensations, to perceptions more and more
compound, to simple reasoning, to reasoning more and more complex and
abstract--more and more remote from sensation. And in the evolution of
feelings, there is a parallel series of steps. Simple sensations;
sensations combined together; sensations combined with represented
sensations; represented sensations organized into groups, in which their
separate characters are very much merged; representations of these
representative groups, in which the original components have become still
more vague. In both cases, the progress has necessarily been from the
simple and concrete to the complex and abstract: and as with the
cognitions, so with the feelings, this must be the basis of classification.
The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might have
filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more important.
Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its defects, let
it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We repeat that, as a
natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the best yet produced. It
is a most valuable collection of carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we
cannot better express our sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those
who hereafter give to this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific
organization, Mr. Bain's book will be indispensable.
VIII. ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.
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