CLOSING YEARS 5I

tyrannised over him. He really lived for the sake
of the little oases of work-time which broke the
monotony of his daily journey.

It should be remembered, that invalid as he
was, Spencer aggravated matters by his scientific
hypochondria, and perhaps also by his soporifics.
His disturbances of health involved little positive suffer-
ing, and, till he was considerably over sixty, he had
few deprivations. Even in old age he had no invalid
appearance. " Neither in the lines of the face nor in
its colour, is there any such sign of constitutional
derangement as would be expected. Contrariwise,
I am usually supposed to be about ten years younger
than I am" (1893).

" Spencer's closing years," Prof. Hudson writes, "were
clouded with much sadness and disappointment." His days
were vacant and his nights a weariness; he had outlived most
of hia friends and was lonely ; and "the completion of his
Synthetic Philosophy in 1896 did not bring him the keen
satisfaction he fairly might have expected." He saw his
political advice disregarded, and on all sides an exuberant
growth of the socialistic organisations which he had spent
himself in criticising. " He saw, too, with profound sorrow,
unmistakable signs everywhere of reaction in religion,
politics, society. The recrudescence of militarism, the
development of a sordidly materialistic "spirit throughout the
modern nations and their abandonment of the principles of
sanity and political righteousness—all these things cast a
very black, shadow over his declining path. I do not wonder
that, as he looked back over his magnificent life-work, his
mind should have been darkened by the doubt as to whether
some of the truths, to which he attached the greatest value,
might not after all have been setforth in vain " ("Fortnightly
Review," 1904, p. 17).

Spencer's life closed in his eighty-third year, on
December 8th, 1903.