86 HERBERT SPENCER

success was reached/' When we read the detailed story of
his preparation, his endeavour, his struggle, his achievement,
we cannot hut feel that his resolute strenuousness was not
far from heroism.

As a nervous subject, Spencer was naturally at
times irritable, as others can be without his excuse,
and even petulant, severe in his utterances, and a
little intolerant. But normally he was habitually
just and tried to understand people, if not as persons,
at least as phenomena. What he said of Carlyle was
much more just than what Carlyle said of him,
though it may have been what we call less " human."
In his own way Spencer felt that " tout comprendre,
c*est tout pardonner," but it has been truly said that
" the natural man would rather be passionately
denounced than treated as a phenomenon to be
co-ordinated.'*l But this was just Spencer's way,
and he applied it equally to himself.

In speaking of his seven years' experience as a committee-
man in connection with the Athenaeum, he notes certain
traits of nature which were manifest to himself at least.
" The most conspicuous is want of tact. This is an inherited
deficiency. The Spencers of the preceding generation were
all characterised by lack of reticence. ... I tended
hahitually to undisguised utterance of ideas and feelings; the
result being that while I often excited opposition from not
remembering what others were likely to feel, I, at the same
time, disclosed my own intentions in cases where concealment
of them was needful as a means to success" (Autobiography,
u*. p. 280).

It must be admitted that there was little out of
the common in Herbert Spencer's daily walk and con-
versation ; in fact, there was a fair share of common-
placeness. Spencer himself was rather amused at
* Gribble, of. At.judicial faculty has been