SOCIOLOGY 45

various peoples in different stages, were made easy,
would immensely facilitate the discovery of socio-
logical truths." The first part of this Descriptiw
Sociology was published in 1873, but the demand
for it was very slight j not quite 200 copies were
asked for in eight months. *< I had," Spencer says,
*' greatly over-estimated the amount of desire which
existed in the public mind for social facts of an
instructive kind, They greatly preferred • those of
an unlnatructive kind." In this and similar connec-
tions, the reader of the Autobiography cannot but be
impressed by two facts,-—on the one hand, the
chivalrous eagerness on the part of American friends
to be allowed to lessen Spencer's pecuniary burden,
and, on the other hand, the almost ultra-sensitive
resoluteness which Spencer exhibited in declining
these offers.

In 1874, w'ltk t^e ramterials and memoranda of a
quarter of a century around him, the thinker, who
was blamed for not being inductive, set himself to
write the Priwip/es of Sociology, " feeling much as
might a general of division who had become com*
mander-in-chief i or rather, as one who had to under-
take this highest function in addition to the lower
functions of til his {subordinates of the first, second,
and third grades, Only by deliberate method per-
sistently followed was it possible to avoid confusion."

The period of work on the Sociology was broken by
some delightful holidays in the Highlands and else-
where, by the British Association meeting at Belfast
(1874) when Tyndall gave his famous Presidential
Addreaa, and by the usual ill-health, The first
volume was completed in 1877. Apart from thee fact