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                      ILLUSTRATIONS

                           OF

                   UNIVERSAL PROGRESS;

                A Series of Discussions.


                           BY
                    HERBERT SPENCER,

                        AUTHOR OF
    "THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY," "SOCIAL STATICS,"
  "ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL AND AESTHETIC," "EDUCATION,"
          "FIRST PRINCIPLES," ETC., ETC., ETC.


                          WITH

   _A NOTICE OF SPENCER'S "NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY."_


                        NEW YORK:
                D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
                   443 & 445 BROADWAY.
                          1865.




                WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

             PUBLISHED BY D. APPLETON & CO.

  _EDUCATION--INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL._ 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth,
      $1.25.

  _A NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY._ Vol. I. _FIRST PRINCIPLES._ Large 12mo.
      503 pages. Cloth $2.00.

  _PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY._ In Quarterly Parts, by Subscription. $2.00
      per year.

                           NOW IN PRESS:

  _ESSAYS--MORAL, POLITICAL, AND AESTHETIC._ 1 vol., large 12mo. Cloth.

        _Copies sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price._

        ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
                         D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
                      Southern District of New York.




       AMERICAN NOTICE

            OF A

  NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.

             BY

      HERBERT SPENCER.


The author of the following work, Mr. Herbert Spencer, of England, has
entered upon the publication of a new philosophical system, so original and
comprehensive as to deserve the attention of all earnest inquirers. He
proposes nothing less than to unfold such a complete philosophy of Nature,
physical, organic, mental and social, as Science has now for the first time
made possible, and which, if successfully executed, will constitute a
momentous step in the progress of thought.

His system is designed to embrace five works; each a distinct treatise, but
all closely connected in plan, and treating of the following subjects in
the order presented: 1st, First Principles; 2d, Principles of Biology; 3d,
Principles of Psychology; 4th, Principles of Sociology; 5th, Principles of
Morality. The opening work of the series--_First Principles_--though
somewhat of an introductory character, is an independent and completed
argument. It consists of two parts: first, "The Unknowable," and second,
"The Laws of the Knowable." Unattractive as these titles may seem, they
indicate a discussion of great originality and transcendent interest.

When public consideration is invited to a system of philosophy so extended
as to comprehend the entire scheme of nature and humanity, and so bold as
to deal with them in the ripest spirit of science, it is natural that many
should ask at the outset how the author stands related to the problem of
Religion. Mr. Spencer finds this the preliminary question of his
philosophy, and engages with it at the threshold of his undertaking. Before
attempting to work out a philosophical scheme, he sees that it is at first
necessary to find how far Philosophy can go and where she must stop--the
necessary limits of human knowledge, or the circle which bounds all
rational and legitimate investigation; and this opens at once the profound
and imminent question of the spheres and relation of Religion and Science.

Mr. Spencer is a leading representative of that school of thinkers which
holds that, as man is finite, he can grasp and know only the finite;--that
by the inexorable conditions of thought all real knowledge is relative and
phenomenal, and hence that we cannot go behind phenomena to find the
ultimate causes and solve the ultimate mystery of being. In such assertions
as that "God cannot by any searching be found out;" that "a God understood
would be no God at all;" and that "to think God _is_ as we think Him to be
is blasphemy," we see the recognition of this idea of the inscrutableness
of the Absolute Cause. The doctrine itself is neither new nor limited to a
few exceptional thinkers. It is widely affirmed by enlightened science, and
pervades nearly all the cultivated theology of the present day. Sir William
Hamilton and Dr. Mansel are among its recent and ablest expounders. "With
the exception," says Sir William Hamilton, "of a few late absolutist
theorizers in Germany, this is perhaps the truth of all others most
harmoniously reechoed by every philosopher of every school;" and among
these he names Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Melanchthon, Scaliger,
Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, and Kant.

But though Mr. Spencer accepts this doctrine, he has not left it where he
found it. The world is indebted to him for having advanced the argument to
a higher and grander conclusion--a conclusion which changes the
philosophical aspect of the whole question, and involves the profoundest
consequences. Hamilton and Mansel bring us, by their inexorable logic, to
the result that we can neither know nor conceive the Infinite, and that
every attempt to do so involves us in contradiction and absurdity; but
having reached this vast negation, their logic and philosophy break down.
Accepting their conclusions as far as they go, Mr. Spencer maintains the
utter incompleteness of their reasoning, and, pushing the inquiry still
farther, he demonstrates that though we cannot grasp the Infinite in
_thought_, we can realize it in _consciousness_. He shows that though by
the laws of thinking we are rigorously prevented from forming a
_conception_ of that Incomprehensible, Omnipotent Power by which we are
acted upon in all phenomena, yet we are, by the laws of thought, equally
prevented from ridding ourselves of the _consciousness_ of this Power. He
proves that this consciousness of a Supreme Cause is not _negative_, but
_positive_--that it is indestructible, and has a higher certainty than any
other belief whatever. The Unknowable, then, in the view of Mr. Spencer, is
not a mere term of negation, nor a word employed only to express our
ignorance, but it means that Infinite Reality, that Supreme but Inscrutable
Cause, of which the universe is but a manifestation, and which has an
ever-present disclosure in human consciousness.

Having thus found an indestructible basis in human nature for the religious
sentiment, Mr. Spencer next shows that all religions rest upon this
foundation, and contain a fundamental verity--a soul of truth, which
remains when their conflicting doctrines and discordant peculiarities are
mutually cancelled. In the lower and grosser forms of religion this truth
is but dimly discerned, but becomes ever clearer the more highly the
religion is developed, surviving every change, and remaining untouched by
the severest criticism.

Mr. Spencer then proceeds to demonstrate that all science tends to
precisely the same great conclusion;--in all directions investigation leads
to insoluble mystery. Alike in the external and the internal worlds, the
man of science sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes of which he
can discover neither the beginning nor the end. If he looks inward, he
perceives that both ends of the thread of consciousness are beyond his
grasp. If he resolve the appearances, properties, and movements of
surrounding things into manifestations of Force in Space and Time, he still
finds that Force, Space, and Time pass all understanding. Thus do all lines
of argument converge to the same conclusion. Whether we scrutinize internal
consciousness or external phenomena, or trace to their root the faiths of
mankind, we reach that common ground where all antagonisms disappear--that
highest and most abstract of all truths, which is affirmed with equal
certainty by both religion and science, and in which may be found their
full and final reconciliation.

It is perhaps hardly just to Mr. Spencer to state his position upon this
grave subject without giving also the accompanying reasoning; but so
compressed and symmetrical is his argument that it cannot be put into
narrower compass without mutilation. To those interested in the advance of
thought in this direction, we may say that the discussion will be found
unsurpassed in nobleness of aim, eloquence of statement, philosophic
breadth, and depth and power of reasoning.

This portion of the work embraces five chapters, as follows: I. Religion
and Science; II. Ultimate Religious Ideas; III. Ultimate Scientific Ideas;
IV. The Relativity of all Knowledge; V. The Reconciliation.

The second and larger portion of _First Principles_ Mr. Spencer designates
"The Laws of the Knowable." By these he understands those fundamental and
universal principles reached by scientific investigation, which underlie
all phenomena, and are necessary to their explanation. Certain great laws
have been established which are found equally true in all departments of
nature, and these are made the foundation of his philosophy. The sublime
idea of the Unity of the Universe, to which science has long been tending,
Mr. Spencer has made peculiarly his own. Through the vast diversities of
nature he discerns a oneness of order and