56 HERBERT SPENCER

entitled, " A theory of population, deducttl jt-mn the
genera! law of animal fertility**; his life-work was
the Synthetic Philosophy, One of George' Eliot's
witticisms made game of Spencer's aptitude for
generalisation. He had been explaining his disbelief
in the critical powers of salmon, ind his aim in miking
flies "the best average representation of an insect
buzzing on the surface of the water," " Yw»," she
said, "you have such a passion for generalising,
you even fish with a generalisation." And this ex-
actly describes what he spent much of hw life in
doing.

Mr Francis Galton has graphically anted his im-
pression, that Spencer's composite mental photo-
graphs, in forming a generalisation, or in using a
general formula-term, were many times multiple of
those of ordinary mortals, A composite mental
photograph from a small number of intellectual
negatives yields a blurred outline—a woolly idea,
with ragged edges and loose ends—bat t composite
mental photograph from ft very large number of im-
pressions, yielded, in Spencer1! case, t generalisation
which was crisp and well-defined. Some one has
said that Ruskin had the most analytic mind in modern
Christendom: that Spencer had one of the most
synthetic minds can hardly be questioned.

3, It was one of the open secrets of Spencer's
power that his analytic tendency wts almost equal to
his synthetic tendency, « Bath subjectively and ob-
jectively, the desire to build up wts accompanied by
an almost equal desire to delve down to the deepest
accessible truth, which should serve is an unshakable
foundation*" "It appears that in the treatment ofad reached," (Auto*