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78 HERBERT SPENCER

is with music as with painting—a great divergence
from the naturalness in any part so distracts my
attention from the meaning or intention of the whole,
as almost to cancel gratification/'

In connection with Spencer's relative lack of interest in
poetry and the drama, or in the works of men like Carlyle
and Ruskin, we have simply to deplore the fact and remember
that his mind was preoccupied with big problems and was
dominated by the scientific mood. From his boyhood he
was ** thinking about only one thing at a time/' and he had
to husband his energies. This is well illustrated by his note
on Carlyle's Cromwell: "If, after a thorough examination
of the subject, Carlyle tells us that Cromwell was a sincere
man, I reply that I am heartily glad to hear it, and that I
am content to take his word for it; not thinking it worth
while to investigate all the evidence which has led him to
that conclusion." This might seem to betray a somewhat
Philistinish contempt for historical study and complacence
therewith, but the real state of the case is revealed in the
sentence that follows the above: " I find so many things to
think about in this world of ours, that I cannot afford to
spend a week in estimating the character of a man who lived
two centuries ago." What he somewhat strangely calls
**interests of an entirely unlike kind" were at that time
strongly attracting him to Humboldt's Kosmos. His outlook
was characteristically cosmic, not human.

Art.—One of Spencer's heresies concerned the old
masters of painting, whose works he regarded as
highly over-rated. On the one hand, he detected
insincerity in the conventional veneration in which
the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, to name
no smaller names, are held. Subject is not dissociated
from execution, and " the judicial faculty has been
mesmerised by the confused halo of piety which sur-
rounds them." There is an aesthetic orthodoxy from
which few are bold enough to dissent. On the other



	78 HERBERT SPENCER is with music as with painting—a great divergence from the naturalness in any part so distracts my attention from the meaning or intention of the whole, as almost to cancel gratification/' In connection with Spencer's relative lack of interest in poetry and the drama, or in the works of men like Carlyle and Ruskin, we have simply to deplore the fact and remember that his mind was preoccupied with big problems and was dominated by the scientific mood. From his boyhood he was ** thinking about only one thing at a time/' and he had to husband his energies. This is well illustrated by his note on Carlyle's Cromwell: "If, after a thorough examination of the subject, Carlyle tells us that Cromwell was a sincere man, I reply that I am heartily glad to hear it, and that I am content to take his word for it; not thinking it worth while to investigate all the evidence which has led him to that conclusion." This might seem to betray a somewhat Philistinish contempt for historical study and complacence therewith, but the real state of the case is revealed in the sentence that follows the above: " I find so many things to think about in this world of ours, that I cannot afford to spend a week in estimating the character of a man who lived two centuries ago." What he somewhat strangely calls *interests of an entirely unlike kind" were at that time strongly attracting him to Humboldt's Kosmos.* His outlook was characteristically cosmic, not human. Art.—One of Spencer's heresies concerned the old masters of painting, whose works he regarded as highly over-rated. On the one hand, he detected insincerity in the conventional veneration in which the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, to name no smaller names, are held. Subject is not dissociated from execution, and " the judicial faculty has been mesmerised by the confused halo of piety which sur- rounds them." There is an aesthetic orthodoxy from which few are bold enough to dissent. On the other