When he set forth, with great daring, to write the "Principles of
Biology," Spencer was already at an advantage compared with the accepted
writers upon the subject, not merely because of his stupendous
intellectual endowment, but also because the idea of the conservation of
energy was a permanent guiding factor in all his thought. Thus it was,
one supposes, that this bold young amateur, for he was little more,
perceived in the light of the evolutionary idea of which he was one of
the original promulgators, a simple truth which had been unperceived by
all previous writers upon biology, from Aristotle onwards. It is in the
last section of his book that Spencer propounds his "law of
multiplication," depending upon what he calls the "antagonism between
individuation and genesis." As I have observed elsewhere, the word
antagonism is perhaps too harsh, and may certainly be misleading, for it
may induce us to suppose that there is no possible reconciliation of the
claims and demands of the race and the individual, the future and the
present. I believe most devoutly that there is such a reconciliation, as
indeed Spencer himself pointed out, and a central thesis of this book is
indeed that in the right expression of motherhood or foster-motherhood,
woman may and increasingly will achieve the highest, happiest, and
richest self-development. Thus one may be inclined to abandon the word
antagonism, and to say merely that there is a necessary inverse ratio
between "individuation" and "genesis," to use the original Spencerian
terms.
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