________________
and dissolution foreshadowed. He again goes on saying that "the change from a diffused imperceptible form to a perceptible concentrated state is an integration of matter and concomittant dissipation of motion and the change from a concentrated perceptible state is an absorption of motion and concomittant disintegration of matter."
Now there is one obvious and yet serious objection to this theory. It proposes to treat the Universe or in fact requires us to treat the Universe as a single object. Every single object is first evolved and then dissolved and SO the Universe. The Universe also, he thinks, emerges from the imperceptible and into the imperceptible it disappears again. Surely Mr. Spencer commits here the fallacy of composition. What is predicable of the parts, he thinks, can be predicated of the whole collectively. Again, we may ask on what grounds is it assumed that the Universe was ever evolved at all? A given man, a given nation, a given continent have their general finite histories of birth and death, upheaval and subsidence. But growth and decay, rise
187
Examina
tion of the
Theory.
The universe
can not be
treated as a single Object
