(Autob. i, 100). Perhaps he meant by that phrase adaptation by an external designer; in any case he failed to see that his own cosmic conception, at least up to its penultimate stage, was thoroughly teleological; and that, without a teleology of some sort, there can be no development, but only indifferent and meaningless change.

It was undoubtedly, as we have seen, the teleological implications of the process, especially in their ethical and social aspect, which from the beginning cast their glamour over Spencer himself. So late as 1882, in a postscript to his speech in New York, he speaks of Nature as leading men unknowingly or in spite of themselves to fulfil her ends; 'Nature being one of our expressions for the ultimate cause of things, and the end, remote when not proximate, being the highest form of human life.' And only in the edition of 1900 was a sentence withdrawn from the First Principles' which stated that, after deducing from the persistence of force all the various characteristics of evolution, 'we finally draw from it a warrant for the belief that evolution can end only in the establishment of the greatest perfection and the most complete happiness' (ed. 4, p. 517). He had explained in a controversial essay that the fittest who survive are not necessarily, or indeed most frequently, the best; yet, so late as 1893, in the preface to the second volume of his 'Principles of Ethics,' while expressing his disappointment that in this part of the subject he has derived no direct aid from the general doctrine of evolution, he says that indirectly it sanctions certain modes of conduct by showing that they fall within the lines of an evolving humanity, are conducive to a higher life, and are for this reason obligatory.' So impossible is it to exorcise the teleological implications of the word, so meaningless would the word be without them.

And if Spencer himself was to the last unconsciously swayed by these implications, it was certainly, in part, to the comforting suggestions of the word that the theory owed its prestige in uncritical circles. Another factor which helps to explain the extraordinary vogue of Spencer's philosophy was its coincidence in point of time with Darwin's discovery. But for the inductions by which biological evolution was established as a fact, it seems doubtful whether a speculative theory like that of

Spencer's would have commanded, in scientific and general circles, the attention and acceptance which, as a matter of fact, it gained. Spencer became the philosopher of the new movement; and if many of the ardent fighters of its battles were probably in Darwin's case, who confessed that he did not even understand Spencer's general doctrine,'* they were equally ready to 'suspect that hereafter he will be looked at as by far the greatest living philosopher in England, perhaps equal to any that have lived.'t And as the protagonists were men of distinguished ability, men to whose ideas the future belonged, Spencerianism became the creed to which every one naturally gravitated who desired to take part against obscurantism. Similar motives operated to spread his fame on the Continent, where the feud between 'enlightenment' and 'clericalism' is bitter and constant. Partly, also, continental thinkers who stood above such animosities—a historian like Höffding for example ‡-were impressed by the fact that here at last was an English thinker who had given to the world a Weltanschauung-a complete system of philosophy; a philosophy also which realised their expectations by carrying out consistently the realistic traditions of English thought.

But these more or less adventitious aids are not sufficient to explain Spencer's reputation. It is more deeply based. Although his philosophical interpretation of the process was radically at fault, and although he has, of course, no property in the idea of evolution as such, still his early and independent espousal of the idea, and his consistent advocacy of its universal extension at a time when such views were very far from being triumphant, made him an intellectual force of very great importance. So completely has the idea passed into the fibre of our thinking that it is difficult for the men of the present generation to estimate the full extent of our debt to Spencer's work. And especially is this the case as the philosophical defects of his own imposing structure become more and more evident. The absence of the metaphysico-religious element in his constitution and his ignorance of preceding philosophy, both of which the 'Auto

* Life and Letters,' iii, 193.

+ Ib. 120. 'Die Englische Philosophie,' p. 241.

biography' so strikingly confirms, explain what a critic so fair and temperate as Henry Sidgwick was fain to call the mazy inconsistency of his metaphysical results.' Dominated by an exclusively physical imagination, he accepted as dogmas the practical assumptions of common sense. Hence, when attacked by thinkers like Green and Professor Ward, although sensitive in points of detail, he completely failed to appreciate the fundamental defects or inconsistencies against which their criticisms were directed. But it was impossible for a mind so active as Spencer's, so fertile in hypotheses, and so full of apt illustration, to marshal the sciences of life and man under the guidance of a great idea without enriching them by a wealth of luminous suggestion. In the very context of the stricture quoted above, Sidgwick speaks of the originality of his treatment and leading generalisations, the sustained vigour of his scientific imagination, the patient, precise ingenuity with which he developes definite hypotheses where other thinkers offer loose suggestions.' What is here said of the 'Psychology' is no less true of the Biology' and of his important contributions to sociological theory. But, besides such departmental work, it was much to hold aloft in an age of specialism the banner of completely unified knowledge; and this is, perhaps, after all, Spencer's chief claim to gratitude and remembrance. He brought home the idea of philosophic synthesis to a greater number of the Anglo-Saxon race than had ever conceived the idea before. His own synthesis, in the particular form he gave it, will necessarily crumble away. He speaks of it himself, indeed, at the close of First Principles' (ed. 1), modestly enough as a more or less rude attempt to accomplish a task which can be achieved only in the remote future and by the combined efforts of many, which cannot be completely achieved even then. But the idea of knowledge as a coherent whole, worked out on purely natural (though not, therefore, naturalistic) principles-a whole in which all the facts of human experience should be included— was a great idea with which to familiarise the minds of his contemporaries. It is the living germ of philosophy itself.

A. S. PRINGLE-PATTISON.

Art. XII. THE JAPANESE REVOLUTION.

1. Japan nach Reisen und Studien. Im Auftrage der Königl. Preuss. Regierung dargestellt, von J. J. Rein. Two vols. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1881-6. (English translation of vol. i. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884.) 2. Japans Volkswirtschaft und Staatsaushalt. By Karl Rathgen. In Schmoller's Staats- und social-wissenschaftliche Forschungen, Bd. x. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1891.

3. The Constitutional Development of Japan, 1853-1881. By Toyokichi Iyenaga, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University Studies). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1891. 4. History of the Empire of Japan. Compiled for the Japanese Commission of the Exhibition of Chicago, 1893, and published by order of the Department of Education. Translated by Captain Brinkley. Tokio: n.d. 5. Correspondence respecting the revision of the Treaty arrangements between Great Britain and Japan. London: Spottiswoode, 1894. (C. 7548.)

6. Der Eintritt Japans in das Europäische Völkerrecht. By Alexander Freiherr von Siebold. Berlin: Kisak

Tamai, 1900. (English translation. Kegan Paul, 1901). 7. Things Japanese. By Basil Hall Chamberlain. Fourth edition. London: Murray, 1902.

8. Okoubo. By Maurice Courant. Paris: F. Alcan, 1904. 9. Japan and China. Their History, Arts, and Literature. By Captain F. Brinkley. London and Edinburgh: Jack, 1903-4.

And other works.

MUCH as has been written about the art, the commerce and industry, the habits and social life of Japan, hardly sufficient attention has hitherto been bestowed, at least in this country, upon its political development. Even Captain Brinkley's great work, admirable as it is in many respects, is distinctly defective on this side. Yet it is on the political changes, which, in the short space of little more than one generation, transformed Japan from an oriental despotism to a constitutional state-on the Japanese Revolution, in short-that the present commanding position of Japan depends. In the following pages an attempt will be made to present this instructive

episode of modern history in an intelligible and connected form.*

Several efforts had been made to penetrate the barriers erected against foreign intercourse by the Shoguns of the Tokugawa family since their elevation to power early in the seventeenth century; but until just fifty years ago these attempts had all been made in vain. During the century which witnessed the Reformation in Europe, Japan was neither exclusive nor intolerant; and Western religion, hand in hand with Western trade, had obtained what seemed to be a firm footing in these islands of the Far East. But religion, in those days, was too often used as the wedge of empire; and the restless ambitions of the Jesuit missionaries alarmed the rulers, who had but recently built up their power on the basis of internal unity and domestic peace. To close the way to conquests like those of Mexico and Peru, they resolved to shut their doors on all foreigners alike. Traders and teachers were driven out; Christianity was violently suppressed, and, for upwards of two centuries, the little Dutch factory, imprisoned in the islet of Deshima, was all that reminded Japan of the existence of the Western world.

With the visits of the American Commodore Perry, in 1853-4, and the commercial treaties which followed, this state of things came to an end. We need not trace the steps by which, during the comparatively short space of fifteen years, the admission of foreigners to the Japanese Empire was brought about, beyond noting the fact-a most important one, as will appear-that the treaties which admitted them were made, not by or with the legitimate sovereign of Japan, the Mikado or Emperor, but by and with the actual ruler, the Shogun. But the opening of Japanese ports to foreign trade was not the most important result which ensued from the visits of Commodore Perry and his successors. The whole social

* It should be stated at the outset that this article makes no pretence to draw on works in the Japanese language; but it is believed that such few Japanese works of authority as have not yet been translated have been practically exhausted by one European writer or another. So far, there is an almost entire lack of memoirs or other records by the principal actors in the Revolution. Unless such works are in existence, and some day see the light, it is to be feared that a history of the Revolution, at once complete and trustworthy, will never be written.