Modern Physical Fatalism and the Doctrine of Evolution. By T.
R. Birks, M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge. (Macmillan and Co.)—The title of this book has special reference to Mr. Herbert Spencer. Physical fatalism and non-responsibility seem to many minds to be the result of his philosophy. It is, in the judgment of Professor Birks, flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrines of Christi- anity, and it is, perhaps, hardly too much to say of it (though Mr. Spencer may resent such a view) that, in the ordinary sense of the words, it is not exactly theistic or religious. Those who regard it (and there arc, we believe, many such) as something finally decisive and un- answerable, will probably not like it the less on that account. We advise them, however, to take the trouble to read and carefully con- sider Professor Birks's criticism of it in this volume of not much more than 300 pages. It is at least clever and ingenious, and unless we are much mistaken, in parts quite crashing. Professor Birks enters the conflict with a good equipment of science and mathematics, which we need scarcely say are required by an antagonist of Mr. Spencer. He tries to convict him of logical inconsistencies, which vitiate his entire system. These have been pointed out before, but not, as far as we know, so fully and elaborately as in this volume. Mr. Spencer, it is shown, borrows his doctrine of the unknowable from Sir William Hamil- ton and Dean Mansel, whose theory, it will be remembered, was criticised with great severity by thinkers so wide apart as Mr. Mill and Mr. Maurice. In Mr. Mill's opinion, that theory was not even correctly drawn from the premises from which it was inferred, and from the premises themselves he altogether dissented. This, too, is Professor Birks's view. Hence he looks on the basis of Mr. Spencer's philosophy
as thoroughly unsound. His chapter on the reality of matter is a specimen of close and ingenious reasoning. On this subject Mr. Spencer, it seems, is wavering and inconsistent. " A centre of force," he says, " without extension is unthinkable,"—a statement not obviously recon- cilable with his definition of matter as " co-existent positions offering re- sistance." Nor is the statement itself true, according to Professor Birks ; the exact reverse, he believes, is nearer the truth. So, again, Mr. Spencer wrongly assumes that the only law conceivable for force is that, like gravity, it shall vary as the inverse square of the distance. He might have known from the' Principia 'that other laws of force are conceivable and are the subject of Newton's reasonings, and also that a force vary- ing, as gravity does, is inconceivable, except with a point for the centre of force. As to the reality of matter, it appears that it is not easy to get at Mr. Spencer's exact view, for with his phrases of its relative reality and its absolute reality he is sorely perplexing. "Can the un- knowable matter," asks Professor Birks, " stand in relation to known matter as cause to effect, and yet remain unknown ? I touch a book, for instance. Is there a known and knowable book which I touch, and another book, unknown and unknowable, which is the cause of the first ?" Again, on the question of the indestructibility of matter, he wants to know what right Mr. Spencer has to say that it is an a priori cognition of the highest order, that the inscrutable Power which the universe manifests to us cannot make or destroy a single particle of this inscrutable substance. It would seem, as he adds, that the reason- able inference is that we cannot tell, on the same principle, that the man could not see the British fleet because it was not yet in sight. With Plato, Professor Birks holds that the absolute reality behind appear- ances must be the home of genuine science, and that all the genuine discoveries of even physical science have been made in defiance of that sensational philosophy which seeks to get rid of things and persons. Mr. Spencer's inconsistency, he thinks, is that, after all, he allows the metaphysical ideas which Comte denounced to play a very important part in his system, and that he invests Force in particular with almost divine attributes. In fact, he is no better off than the theologian. Mr. Spencer talks of force, the theologian talks of God, and both are on a par, as they are talking of something inscrutable, and if we choose so to call it, metaphysical. Many will think with Professor Birks, that if we must make a choice, the theologian is to be preferred, as on the whole, he talks somewhat more intelligently on the subject which must ever remain a mystery. The volume ends with a discussion of the doctrine of evolution, to which some formidable objections are suggested. Of course it is _comparatively easy to urge such objections, and a man with Professor Birks's resources is sure to do it at least well and cleverly. But we do not think that this is quite the strongest part of his book. It is perhaps a subject with which he is not quite so much at home as with mathe- matics and its application to physical science. Generally, he is a close 'reasoner, and he seems to us to have detected not a few gaps in Mr. Spencer's armour, which that able thinker's many enthusiastic disciples should look to.
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