Herbert Spencer : estimate review

Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

HEKBEKT SPENCER

V

I

HERBERT SPENCER M*

AN ESTIMATE AND REVIEW

BY

JOSIAH ROYCE

TOGETHER WITH A CHAPTER OF PERSONAL
REMINISCENCES BY JAMES COLLIER

NEW YOR
FOX, DUFFIELD & CO
1904

b

o / ,

Copyright, 190$
BY Fox, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

Published September, 1904
Printed in America

THI UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PAGE
SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONCEPT OF

EVOLUTION 7

His THEORIES OF EDUCATION 119

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY JAMES COLLIER,
FOR NINE YEARS THE SECRETARY AND FOR
TEN YEARS THE AMANUENSIS OF SPENCER 185

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS
CONTRIBUTION TO THE CON
CEPT OF EVOLUTION

HERBERT SPENCER

AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE

CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION

SINCE Spencer's death, there
already have appeared many re
views and estimates of his life-
work. Their number is likely soon to be
increased by the reading of his " Auto
biography " which we now have in our
hands. The new perspective in which
this work enables us to see our philoso
pher is a sufficient justification for many
attempts afresh to sum up and to char
acterize what he did for philosophical
inquiry, and what his influence meant.
Features of Spencer's activity which
we have heretofore been obliged to view
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as it were from a distance, and to know
only through the necessarily inadequate
reports of his personal friends and dis
ciples, are now brought near to us, and
are exhibited in the decidedly clear light
of his own deliberate and wholesomely
straightforward confession. What,
then, is the consequence of reconsid
ering the ideals and the methods of
Spencer's philosophy in the light of his
autobiography ? To this question the
following paper is an attempted, and
admittedly partial, contribution.

Spencer's life-work is a part of a very
large historical movement. For the
sake, therefore, of giving the whole
discussion its due setting, I shall begin
with a few comments upon the general
history and meaning of the concept of
Evolution. I shall then review what
the "Autobiography " tells us about the
origin and significance of Spencer's

own view of Evolution. Thirdly, I
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shall attempt a sketch of this view itself
in its finished form. Fourthly, I shall
close with some critical observations
upon the significance of Spencer's work
as a thinker.

11

THE names, Theory of Evolution,
Philosophy of Evolution, Dar
winism, and, less frequently,
Spencerianism, have now entered into
general literature as denoting (in the
minds of various people who use them)
a decidedly variable collection of doc
trines, all of which have to do with the
growth, or, in general, with the natural
origin of things. The doctrines in ques
tion either have actually originated
during the nineteenth century, or else
have been restored to a former promi
nence in the course of that period. If, as
is very frequently the case, a biologist

uses any of the terms in question, he is
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likely to confine their meaning, in the
special discussion in which he chances
to be engaged, to doctrines that have
directly, and perhaps exclusively, to do
with the origin of various animals or
plants from earlier living forms, through
a gradual and natural transformation.
If a sociologist or historian employs
such a term, he may give it a special
reference to the doctrine of the animal
descent of man, or he may merely be
referring to theories regarding the origin
or growth of languages, institutions,
or civilizations. If a philosopher or
theologian speaks of a theory of evolu
tion, he may, on the contrary, include
doctrines which refer to the entire
process of the knowable universe, or at
least to some aspect of that entire proc
ess. In Spencer's own usage the term
" Evolution " was a name for one of two
processes which together, according to
him, comprise the "whole range of
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natural " events, so far as these can be
come known to us. These processes are
for Spencer Evolution and Dissolution.
Since, by a doctrine of evolution, one
who uses that word may thus refer to
very inclusive and, on the other hand,
to decidedly special theories, there is a
good deal of confusion regarding what
is meant by an " evolutionist." An
evolutionist, in the minds of some peo
ple, means simply a man who leaves
God out of account in trying to explain
the origin of things, substituting natural
agencies for creative acts. In the usage
of others, stress is laid upon the notion
that the " law of evolution " is supposed
somehow to guarantee the triumph, in
the long run, of whatever makes for
" progress," so that an evolutionist shall
be one who believes that Nature tends
towards the constantly increasing per
fection of the world, or at least of man.

For still others, amongst whom are not
14

a few liberal theologians, an evolution
ist may be a theist, who holds that
gradual processes of evolution constitute
God's method of creation. A more
technically limited usage defines an
evolutionist as one who systematically
uses the history of things as a means
for explaining, or estimating, their na
ture and value. In this sense an evolu
tionist is one who, for instance, if he is a
philologist, attempts to throw light on
the grammar or on the etymology of a
language by means of a comparative
study of the evolution of the group of
languages to which it belongs ; or who,
if he is a moralist, uses a theory of the
origin of conscience to explain and to
define the authority of conscience.
And, finally, the term evolutionist may
be limited in its application, as before
indicated, so as to refer to one who holds
opinions regarding the evolution of
some single class of natural objects,
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such as stellar and solar systems, or
animals, or social institutions.

Thus it becomes frequently uncertain
what is implied by any particular usage
of the term evolutionist ; and the popu
lar mind is frequently confused by the
mistakes made. Nevertheless, it is true
that the various tendencies to which
the name is applied actually have a
good deal in common. And one reason
why it is hard to agree upon any ter
minology whereby the various sorts of
opinion in question can be kept apart
lies in the fact that the tendency to
believe that things in general have been
subject to some sort of evolution is one
of the oldest of human tendencies.
The origin of the philosophical doctrine
of evolution is lost in a remote antiq
uity. In some sense, such as is still
frequently attached to the word, the
early Greek philosophers of Nature

were all of them evolutionists. The
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denial of evolution, or the definite
subordination of the processes of growth
to some other type of supposed realities,
is, in philosophy, rather the later result
of certain theoretical or theological
considerations than the earlier preju
dice of the philosophers. The first
philosophical attempts to explain things
take naturally the form of evolutionary
speculations. In giving a very new
definiteness and a great wealth of novel
detail to such speculations, the philos
ophy of the nineteenth century simply
carried to a higher stage tendencies
which had resulted from the most ele
mentary forms of the scientific interest
in the universe. As this view of the
historical place of the concept of evo
lution in the history of human thought
is popularly somewhat neglected, we
must dwell upon the matter for a
moment.

Man's speculations as to the origin of
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things take their earliest known form
in those " creation-stories " which are
found in so many primitive religions.
The " creation-stories " are themselves
often, in part, mythical accounts, not
only of various creative and inventive
feats of deities and demi-gods, but also
of quasi-evolutionary processes, — that
is, of processes conceived after the
analogy of known natural processes of
generation and growth. A creation-
story is usually also a genealogy. Un
expected growths, and more or less
magical, that is, in the primitive sense,
physical processes, aid or thwart the
deeds of creators; and only upon de
cidedly higher levels of religious thought
do there appear gods powerful enough
to create some whole order of things
by their own directly exerted fiat.
Even they may be thwarted here and
there by the rebellion of their creatures,

or by the devices of rival gods ; so that
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it is hard to devise a theology which
shall reduce everything to the result of
one creative will. Something that has
a nature of its own usually stands over
against the mythical creator, as the ma
terial which he "fashions," as the
chance which limits him, or as the
enemy who uses more or less magical
devices to baffle him.

Even primitive mythology thus pre
pares the way for an evolutionary
fashion of thinking in which orderly
processes take the place of fiats. Such
a fashion of thought gets free as soon
as philosophy fairly begins. Hindoo
thought contains a good deal of evo
lutionary speculation. But Greek
thought, in the pre-Socratic period,
begins the very process of which our
latest evolutionary thinking is the
legitimate outcome, — an outcome deter
mined, indeed, by a vast increase of a
knowledge of nature, but impossible
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without the persistent use of certain
leading ideas which the Greeks already
possessed, and which we still employ
in a way by no means wholly unlike
their own. We have no place here
for any account of Greek opinion in
the first period of ancient philosophy ;
but we may lay stress upon two or three
leading ideas which belonged to the
pre-Socratic age, and which have been
potent even in the latest evolutionary
speculation.

The first is the idea that Nature is a
region where mutually opposed pro
cesses, in the long run, balance each
other, producing as their combined
result a vast circuit or cycle of changes,
whereof all special processes of growth
and decay are incidents. This leading
idea (since often represented in popular
thought, side by side with ideas that
have resulted from later and higher
grades of human knowledge) is
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obviously suggested by a compara
tively crude induction ; which the early
Greek thinkers soon rather hastily
universalized, so as to apply it to all
things. Night follows day, and day
night; the seasons alternate; the
changes of the weather, the periodic
sequences of periods of drought and of
rain, the ebb and flow of prosperity,
suggest what our modern moralizing or
weather-wise countryman still summar
izes by various proverbs about the com
pensations of Nature, such as : " It is a
long lane that has no turn," or, " What
goes up must come down." In brief,
Nature alternates between opposite ten
dencies. The early Greek cosmogonist
generalizes from such processes. They
indicate how the whole of Nature has
been formed and will pass away, —
doubtless to be renewed again in dis
tant ages. From the "Boundless" of

Anaximander, certain " opposites " dif-
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f erentiate ; these, combining and recom-
bining, lead to the complex world that
now we see. But all these things will
pass back again into the Boundless,
" paying the penalty of the injustice "
of their separate existence. " The way
up " and " the way down" are the two
opposed roads that the fire-stuff of
Heraklitos follows, as it takes on the
transient form now of this, now of
that thing. It is governed — this living
fire-stuff — by "measures." Nothing,
therefore, is really gained or lost when
new things arise, or when former things
vanish. Something, vaguely conceived
as " justly " invariant, persists, not as a
fixed thing, but as a " measure," all
through the process of natural change.
It is as when one ware is " exchanged "
for another; for so is the fire-stuff
"exchanged" for all things, and they
in turn for it. Fixed law governs the

whole process of this evolutionary ex-

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change, whereby everything is gener
ated, and in its turn is dissolved.
There is no special creation about the
process. It is an evolution. Later
cosmogonists give us other accounts of
the moving principle that determines
the evolution or the dissolution of
things; but the general notion that a
vast rhythm of growth and decay, or
of "mingling" and "sundering," of
"thickening" and "thinning," or of
some such opposed processes, deter
mines the evolution of things, as well
as their passing away, and the equally
prominent notion that this rhythm is
subject to regular law of some sort,
these soon become prominent ideas of
early Greek physical speculation.

The second leading idea here in ques
tion is, that the evolution of mind, that
is, of the souls of men and of animals,
is an incident of this general process,

and is governed by whatever laws
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determine the evolutionary process
viewed as a whole. The early Greek
physicist is unquestionably under the
influence of primitive animism to such
an extent that he conceives Nature as
in some sense alive through and
through. But, unlike the savage, he
does not look to gods, or to spirits, or to
other capriciously interfering wills to
explain the origin of anything in the
natural world. Nature is a realm where
a power, or where perhaps (as in case
of the doctrine of Empedokles) two
opposed powers, shall determine in a
regular way, and in accordance with
pervasive law, the whole process of
evolution. This determining power (or
possibly pair of powers) is at once a
material power, and also more or less
alive. It is " divine," " wise," " intelli
gent," or something of the sort. But
it is also uniform, impersonal, and in
separable from its own expression in
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the course of the physical world. It is
distinctly "Nature," and not any god
or demon ruling over Nature from with
out, or interfering with Nature. It
takes form equally in our bodies and in
our soul-life. All Nature is thus an evo
lution, or a dissolution, of the embodi
ments of this power. And our souls
arise in a natural way in the course of
this universal process.

A third leading idea, due to the fact
that Greek philosophy grew up, so to
speak, upon the seashore, is that the
origin of life from the sea, or from
u slime," or from some close connection
between the processes which connect
land, sea, and air, must be viewed as a
central fact of importance for the com
prehension of this whole evolutionary
story. This idea of the origin of the
organic from the inorganic appears in
different degrees of prominence in dif
ferent philosophies, and is of a some-
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what secondary importance. But it
survives in subsequent speculation.
Nor was it a mere guess. It was due
to a genuine, even if very crude, ob
servation of Nature.

In later Greek philosophy, the con
ceptions of evolution and dissolution,
while retaining a significant place in
the greater systems of ancient thought,
became somewhat subordinate, and
sometimes obscured, by the predomi
nance of other speculative interests.
One notion which tended, by compari
son, to render both evolution and
dissolution less important for a philoso
pher's survey of the universe, was a
leading philosophical idea very differ
ent from the " special creation " which
the nineteenth-century evolutionist gen
erally regards as his principal enemy.
This was not the idea of any lawless
ness or capriciousness of things, or of
the prevalence of any miraculous inter-
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ference with the course of Nature, but
rather the idea of the Eternity, and
so, very frequently, of the temporal
permanence, not only of the universe,
but of all the greater distinctions within
the universe, — an idea which, in the
form of the doctrine of the " perma
nence of species," did indeed directly
oppose itself, in the last century, to
Darwinism. This special idea of the
permanence of species had then long
since been united, by Christian theol
ogy, with the conception of a special
creation, whereby all the permanent
species had been initiated. But, in its
more articulate forms, the idea of the
permanence of the specific forms or
' * natures ' ' of things came into later
philosophy not at all as a corollary of
the idea of a "special creation," but
rather through the influence of Plato
and Aristotle. And so this leading idea

of later Greek philosophy was a part

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only of the general conception that the
world, together with all of its most
rationally significant features, is eternal.
Plato's world contained a realm of flux,
which, so far as it was flux, was evil
and untrue, and a realm of eternal
ideas, which were both true and good,
and which were accordingly above all
change. Aristotle did indeed lay
great stress upon the evolution every
where present in the sublunary region
of "genesis and corruption." But in
this region it was each individual thing
which grows and then passes away.
The " forms " which are responsible for
the evolution of individuals are as eter
nal as the Platonic ideas. They there
fore do not evolve. Plotinus conceived
an universe which might indeed be
called, in one sense, an " emanation "
from its eternal first principle. But
this emanation is not a temporal pro
cess. It has always taken place, in a
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series of descending grades of perfec
tion, which temporally appear side by
side. Only individual things, and souls,
go through processes of growth or of
progress, of decay or of falling away
from perfection. In the universe,
viewed as a whole, all the main distinc
tions are everlasting.

This conception of the eternity of the
forms of things is, historically con
sidered, by far the most significant op
ponent that the philosophical doctrine
of evolution ever has had or ever can
have. It is primarily the expression,
not of primitive superstition, nor yet of
a theistic bias, but of a very highly
developed conception of things which
tends in itself rather towards panthe
ism than towards creationism. This
doctrine of the eternity of the forms
was suggested to the philosophical
mind by three different leading inter
ests: — (1) An interest in astronomy;
29

(2) an interest in logic and in mathe
matics ; (3) an interest in the permanent
significance of ethical truth. As to
the first of these interests (ancient in
origin, obvious in Plato, and still more
pronounced in Aristotle) it had led
early astronomers to a long continued
observation of the heavens, and to an
impression that there, at least, all (ex
cept the fact of the motion of the va
rious heavenly bodies) was eternally
changeless, while the movements in
question were themselves regularly
repeated, and of invariable type. The
second of these interests was rendered
impressive by the whole development
of early Greek arithmetic and geometry,
and by the Socratic and, still more, by
the Platonic and Aristotelian studies of
the nature of logical truth. The third
interest, prominent, but undeveloped,
in Socrates, reached a classic perfection
of expression in Plato, and has ever
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since deeply influenced the course of
human thought. It was one form of
the concern in what Emerson has called
" the sovereignty of ethics."

The result of these three interests
was that the evolutionary aspect of the
universe went into the background, al
though never disappearing, in later Greek
speculation. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,
all gave attention to the growth and to
the decay of individual things, and to
the laws of individual or of social prog
ress and degeneration; but for them
the universe, taken in its wholeness,
could not, in view of the just-men
tioned reasons, be conceived in terms
of all-embracing evolutionary formulas.
Both the Stoics and the Epicureans,
returning in part to earlier forms of
physical speculation, made the evolu
tionary aspect of the universe more
prominent than did the systems just

mentioned ; but they, too, subordinated
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evolution to other aspects of the uni
verse ; for they were, above all, ethical
philosophers.

Christian theology, uniting, as it did,
Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions
with the Theism of the prophets of
Israel, and of their Jewish successors,
was led to a sort of theological com
promise which long remained classic.
A conception of an initial special crea
tion — a conception due to old Testa
ment traditions — was brought into a
sort of synthesis with the Hellenic
doctrine of the eternity of the * £ na
tures" or "forms" of things. An
" order of Nature," occasionally inter
fered with by miracle, and supple
mented by the unceasing creation of
new human souls, consequently took
the place of the older Greek philo
sophical conception, but still made the
latter predominant in the explanation

of all natural truth. The evolutionary
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aspect of things was thus, indeed, by
reason of the creationism of the creed,
placed still farther in the background ;
although more or less heretical reviv
als of the evolutionary ideas of the
foretime were present amongst the
opinions that the Christian theologian
from time to time had to encounter in
controversy.

Modern philosophy, breaking away
indeed, in the seventeenth century,
from the regular course of theological
tradition, was still, at the outset, under
influences which gave it comparatively
little opportunity to pay renewed at
tention to the evolutionary aspect of
things. Amongst these influences to
which modern philosophy was at first
subject, was that of the physical sci
ences, as they developed from Galileo
to Newton. Modern science, in this
its first great movement, did not con
tribute to an interest in the growth of
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things, nor promise to throw much
new light upon origins. For just as
the ancient astronomy had seemed to
prove the eternity of the heavenly
spheres, so the new astronomy, despite
the enormous alteration in the concep
tions of the physical world which it so
quickly produced, gave in a new form
the impression to the philosophers that
the permanence of the celestial system,
and in fact of the whole mechanical
order of Nature, is much more impor
tant than is any process of an evolution
ary sort that seems to take place in the
realm of Nature, whether celestial or
terrestrial. The typical seventeenth-
century philosophers, despite their
occasional evolutionary speculations,
conceived the world as a whole, and
the living organisms in particular, as
complex machines. Such views, in
deed, logically involved the conception

that these machines, in so far as they
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had a beginning at all, must have had
a purely natural origin, and this logical
necessity is variously recognized; but
is left as a subordinate fact. The
highly synthetic doctrine of Leibnitz,
in its great effort to unify the organic
and the mechanical aspects of Nature,
found a place for a sort of evolution,
whereby special organic unities could
have been developed. But the Leib-
nitzian metaphysical conceptions re
mained too remote from phenomenally
verifiable processes to make possible
any articulate conception of organic
evolution. And so, once more, during
not only the seventeenth, but the early
part of the eighteenth century, there
was illustrated the notable truth, so
much overlooked by modern evolution
ists of the Spencerian type, — the truth
that the great historical enemy of the
evolutionary interest in philosophy has
been, not " supernaturalism," nor yet
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the doctrine of " special creation," but
the tendency to conceive the universe as
an eternal, and so, temporally viewed, as
an essentially permanent order, whose
laws may be studied, and whose events
often include what we call growth, but
whose main outlines, classifications,
processes, forms, are the same yester
day, to-day, and forever; so that the
story of the origins of things, even
when true, is of secondary import.
Astronomy, mechanical science, mathe
matics, logic, ethics, all furnish motives
which, justly or unjustly, have led men
to emphasize this view of things. Ac
cordingly, whenever these motives are
predominant in special science and in
philosophy, evolution is likely to l)e sub
ordinated, overlooked, or denied. Other
wise, however, evolutionary views are
ancient and natural results of a study
of Nature.

Not until towards the end of the
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eighteenth century, after a new Hu
manism had taken possession of the
historical movement of life and of
thought, did the time recur for mak
ing evolutionary concepts, of one sort
or another, philosophically important.
In order to narrate the tale of the rise
of the evolutionary, or as one may (for
the age in question) call it, the histor
ical movement, one would have to re
count the annals of the growth of
Romanticism, to describe the move
ment of post-Kantian Idealism, and
also to give an account of the revival
and of the rapid progress of the or
ganic sciences, and of historical schol
arship, in the whole period between
1770 and 1830. Suffice it here to say
that, in the years in question, in Ger
man, and, to some extent, in French
thought, the centre of scientific and
philosophical interest was shifted, at

first slowly, then rapidly, from a
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primary concern for the relatively
mechanical explanation of Nature, to
an intense devotion to a following of
the growth of things. It is true that
this shifting of interest did not ob
scure, in the minds of those who were
interested in the more exact physical
sciences, the belief that whatever his
torically happens in the natural world
is also subject to definable, necessary,,
and, in some sense, mechanical laws.-
The trains of thought which led to the
modern doctrine of energy, and which
express themselves in Spencer's own
conception of the Persistence of Force,
are of the general logical type which
was predominant in the thought of the
seventeenth century. But nineteenth-
century thought is not, as a whole,
one-sided. It declines to ignore the
mechanical aspect of things for the
sake of emphasizing its interest in his
tory. Yet, as a fact, it is still more
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intensely interested in the historical
aspect of things than it is in their per
manent nature. It is the century of
the organic and humane sciences; and
to these, despite the vast advances of
physics, chemistry, and mathematics,
the interest of the nineteenth century
subordinates the unchanging, the eter
nal, the unhistorical aspect of Nature.
The nineteenth century fully recog
nizes the latter; but this aspect of re
ality cannot hide from its view the
significance of evolution. Geology,
embryology, comparative philology, the
history of religion, of social institu
tions, of art, of politics, anthropolog
ical research, sociological generalization,
— these are the great new achievements
of nineteenth-century science. The
general doctrine of evolution, in its "
recent forms, is merely the culmina
tion and natural outgrowth of these

combined and affiliated types of re —
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search. The great battle for the recog
nition of the evolutionary aspect of
things was already fought and won, in
principle, before 1830. The traditional
theological creationism of Christian
doctrine was certain sooner or later
to give way before the interests of a
scientific and philosophical movement
which had already added to the fabled
word of Gfalileo: "And yet it does
move," the further watchword, — a
counter-assertion to the doctrine of a
rigid and eternal mechanical order:
"And yet it does grow." The problem
of modern philosophy was thus the
reconciliation of real evolution with
real mechanism (since the nineteenth
century believed in both), rather than
the task of overcoming the theological
doctrine of "special creation." The
theologians, to be sure, were long un
aware of the meaning of the new ten
dencies. The general public also had
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to be instructed. A Darwin was needed
to show the naturalists how to bring
their own long-since pronounced evolu
tionary tendencies to a focus. There
was and still is room for many men
such as Spencer to throw light upon
the synthesis which the new age
needed. But the hindrance which
had prevented the philosophy of the
seventeenth century from reviving, in
full force, early Greek evolutionism,
was not Christian theology (which that
philosophy already treated with be
coming independence), but was the
predominence of the mathematical and
mechanical conceptions in the natural
sciences of that earlier time, and the
consequent absence of an interest in
the growth of things. This hindrance
lost its main force when the philosophy
of the Romantic Period, and the revival
of the historical and organic sciences
after 1815, insured henceforth due at-
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tention to the evidences of evolution.
From that time on, the process was an
inevitable one, which the various nat
ural sciences had only to apply in their-
special realms, and which theologians
were bound to follow, like the rest of
mankind, whenever their own time was
ripe. " Special creation," viewed as a
positive dogma, was quite as much dis
credited by the spirit of the philosophy
of the seventeenth century as it could
be by our own. Yet evolution could
not take its place in philosophy until
the time had come for recognizing the
historical aspect of things.

So much for a few words by way of
correcting a false perspective in which
the history of the idea of evolution is
still popularly viewed. As a fact, crude
inductions, in the infancy of science,
began already to point towards the
later doctrine. And the tendency to

exclude the miraculous from science is
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precisely as old as is Greek philosophy
itself. Nor were even the early Greek
forms of the doctrine of evolution mere
guesses, as some writers still like to
represent. They were hasty, but, for
their time, very sane, and by no means
wholly unjustified, results of the early
observation of Nature. They already
included: (1) The notion that the
evolutionary processes are differentia
tions, whereby variety grows out of
seeming simplicity; (2) The further
notion that our souls have the same
sort of natural genesis that our bodies
have; (3) The idea that the whole
evolutionary process is due to a single
law, or pair of laws, and not to special
creations; (4) The conception that
life originates from the inorganic (from
" earth," from the sea, from " slime,"
etc.) ; and (5) The thesis that there is,
in the universe at large, a rhythm of

evolution and dissolution, which is also
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connected with a rhythm of " thicken
ing " and " thinning," of " cooling " and
"heating," or of other processes; that
is, with a rhythm of the general type
of the " integration " and " disinte
gration " of which we have later heard
so much. And it was a keen if crude
watching of natural things which made
all these ideas plausible to the early
Greek philosophers.

For the rest, the historical motives
which so long delayed the transfor
mation of these first crude inductions
into higher scientific shapes, were by
no means solely either theological or
anti-scientific. They had to do with
extremely important and rational
motives, both of science and of phi
losophy, — motives which emphasized
the need of a recognition of the more
permanent aspects, both of Nature and
of universal law. Thinkers were thus
long held back from learning more
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about evolution, not merely by the
survival in culture of a belief in mi
raculous creations, but still more by the
growth, in their own leading minds, of
an interest in mathematics, in ethics,
and in the very permanence of natural
law itself. Truth of the unchanging
types thus often obscured, in men's
thoughts, truth of an historical nature.
Thus the delay of the recognition of
evolution by Science and by Philosophy,
was merely an incident of an inevitable
one-sidedness of human thinking; but
this one-sidedness was in no wise un
wholesome, and was due to an over
emphasis of motives that were, in part,
both philosophic and scientific.

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II

IN the England in which Herbert
Spencer grew up, it was, neverthe
less, the case that, in the period of
his boyhood and youth, all these evolu
tionary tendencies were indeed remote
enough from the minds of the popularly
well-known thinkers. For the move
ment of the Romantic philosophy was
hardly known in Great Britain; the
Continental revival of historical scholar
ship had as yet but little affected the
leading tendencies of English learning ;
the conservatism and caution of British
scientific men, as well as the decidedly
settled theological traditions of the
country, alike served for years to keep
the " development theory," so far as it

was discussed at all, far in the back-
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ground. In contributing so largely to
the growth of the new science of
geology, British research was indeed
laying a most important part of the
foundations for the coming evolution
ary conceptions of the latter half of
the century; but the meaning of this
movement in geological research was
still unrecognized. It was true of
Great Britain, therefore, that a public
acknowledgment of the significance of
evolutionary ideas was still a long way
from the focus of attention; and it
was also true that the influence of a
conservative theology was here far
more potent in discouraging independ
ent philosophical inquiry than was the
case in Grermany. It is not surprising,
therefore, that, when Spencer ulti
mately came to consciousness regard
ing his own doctrines (ignorant as he
always remained of their historical
relationships), he should henceforth
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regard the revival of evolutionary con
ceptions as more of a break with philo
sophical traditions than it actually was.
He, at least, was extraordinarily in
nocent regarding every sort of nexus
between his own philosophy and that
of any remote period or foreign country.
His processes were, for his conscious
ness, his own. Honest as the day in
acknowledging every indebtedness that
he ever observed, he never learned how
to regard human philosophical thought
itself as an evolutionary process in
which his own thinking had an organic
place. Hence, as soon as we come to
consider his own development, we have,
like himself, to break for the time with
tradition, and to consider him in all the
very striking independence of his char
acter, in all the unconventionality of
his training. This is what he has now
enabled us to do by means of his

" Autobiography."

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The incidents of this narrative will
attract, no doubt, their full share of
attention, and will soon become fa
miliar to many readers. Our concern
is here more with the general type of
the man, and with the way in which
he so gradually and reasonably grew in
to his subsequent doctrine. The " Auto
biography" shows us a life free from
most of the great crises through which
men of ability and sensitiveness are
usually found to have passed. No
romance made his youth stormy; no
religious period had to be lived out;
no great worldly ambition had to
be disappointed. Always of slender
means, he was never abjectly poor.
Forced to earn his living, he was never
long bound to any uncongenial work.
Eccentric, he was never despised. In
dependent, and prone, as he says, to
indiscreet criticism of his official supe
riors, so long as he had such, he still
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cherished no personal grudges, and
had little or no consciousness of ever
actually quarrelling with anybody.
Moreover, he deliberately abandoned
good worldly chances which men who
recognized his ability were glad to
offer him. Wholly unwilling, and un
able, to win favor by flattery or by
social conformity, he made apparently
few or no enemies, and cemented a
few very lasting and loyal friendships,
which, for him, were enough. Critical
of all men, he was never bitter, except
occasionally in controversy; and there
his obvious love of truth usually made
his sharpness of speech tolerable.
Asking for no sympathy, he in the
long run obtained a great deal of sym
pathy from those who valued him.
With none of the arts of the party
leader, he won, in time, a little band of
disciples whose devotion was, as we

all know, wonderful, and whose fidelity
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took, upon occasion, very definite
material forms. A confirmed bachelor,
he was not only fond of children, but
respected their independence, and
treated them so as to show his respect.
Devoid of romantic sentiments, he was
capable of a very noble type of friend
ships with congenial women. A very
elaborate, and in his own way a very
technical thinker, and a friend of a few
of the greatest minds of his time, he
also remained fond, in private life, of
the company of some decidedly thought
less people. Reserving his best for a
Huxley or a George Eliot, he still was
a good companion of plain folk. A
propagandist, he still despised every
ordinary device for winning public
favor. Patient in his toil so long as the
public neglected him, he declined all
sorts of worldly honor when they came
to recognize him. In brief, his per
sonal and worldly relationships were of
51

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a very high order of moral straight
forwardness.

The great misfortune of his life was
his nervous invalidism. This, of which
he had in early manhood some warn
ings, became decidedly important in
1854, at the age of thirty-four, and
thenceforth, with various intermis
sions, and with periods of greatly
increased severity, remained his com
panion to the end. Its origin was, as
his carefully narrated family history
shows, partly due to his inherited
nervous constitution — a sensitive and
irritable one. On the other hand, even
without any disposition to lay undue
stress upon the recently over-empha
sized theory which regards the nervous
troubles of a vast number of literary
men as mainly due to the indirect effect
of eye-strain, no reader of Spencer's
account who is accustomed to the or
dinary complaints of nervous students
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can fail to suspect that some sort of
eye-defect played probably, almost
unrecognized by Spencer, a very con
siderable part in his history of invalid-
ism.1 In his earlier descriptions of his
symptoms, the association of his " head-
sensations," and of his subsequent in
somnia, with reading " even for a few
minutes," and the fact that, very early

1 The theory here in question is the one due to Dr.
George M. Gould, and set forth in his " Biographic
Clinics" (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1903, 1904). Dr. Gould
actually analyzes the cases of fourteen men and women
of literary note ; but in his comments he clearly shows
that he regards the type of cases in question as repre
sented by an actually " vast " number of other sufferers
of a highly intellectual sort. The objection suggested in
my text is due, not to any disposition on my part to judge
for myself the clinical facts of the oculist's observation,
but to a confidence that, at least in their higher psy
chological complications, the varied troubles of highly
nervous subjects of intellectual type, although no doubt
very often greatly complicated by eye-strain, can seldom
or never be explained as mainly due to any one irritating
cause. Their deeper cause generally seems to lie in the
whole inherited constitution of the sufferer. Spencer's
case, in this respect, is less complicated than are those of
several of Dr. Gould's other subjects.

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in his experience of defect, he found
that he could often dictate without
great confusion of head when he was
unable to read or to write, — these are
phenomena of a sort which we now
adays regard as prima-facie evidence
that a man had better consult his oc
ulist before becoming any more expert
in mysterious head-symptoms. Spen
cer himself, however, seems to have
invented explanations of his troubles
mainly in terms of the peculiar states
which he attributed to his cerebral
circulation; and in the long run he
plainly decided upon his devices for
self-treatment and regimen with char
acteristic indifference to the advice of
anybody else. His accounts of the
later phases of his disorder, in his
middle life and old age, show the usual
marks of the man expert in a round of
symptoms, and in a hypochondriacal
mode of attributing to them more sig-
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nificance than they probably have. If
Spencer could only have viewed them
in another light, they might have
proved much more manageable. In
any case, this nervous history is inter
estingly free, despite the long-continued
periods of incapacity which it often in
cluded, from the so frequent tale of
deeper emotional and intellectual dis
turbance which most nervous students
have to tell. Whatever the malady
was, it left Spencer's essential moral
personality remarkably unscathed and
his associative processes relatively in
tact. It gave a certain dreary formal
ity to his literary style, but did not
injure his clearness and self-control of
expression. It gave him no periods of
deeper despair of which he thinks it at
all worth while to tell. In the beauti
fully frank summary and estimate of
the worth of his life, in his closing
"Reflections," he plainly tries to say
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both the best and the worst that, as he
thinks, can fairly be said, from a per
sonal point of view, regarding the value
to himself of the life which he had
passed. And his worst is indeed not
very bad. The principal moral conse
quence of his malady which he con
fesses was a frequently uncontrollable
but very simply expressed irritability ;
so that, perhaps, he occasionally swore
at a mishap in fishing, or otherwise
gave way to some outburst which his
early training and his intellectual habits
alike made, in his own eyes, foolish.
Such reflexes of the moment were asso
ciated with a certain chronic captious-
ness in his judgments of people, art,
etc., and with a good many invalid
eccentricities of conduct. Amongst
these were the already famous ear-cov
erings whereby he used to escape from
wearing conversations. In all his re
flections on life in the "Autobiography,"
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Spencer is also fond of emphasizing
the uncontrollable character of the
emotions, in a way that partly depends
upon his experience as an invalid.
Nevertheless, even at his worst he
strikes the reader as a man of uncom
mon freedom from uncontrollable emo
tions of a deeper sort; and one who
reads, even between the lines, must be
convinced that Spencer was spared a
very great deal of what the nervous
invalid of a highly intellectual type
generally suffers. In his worst sea
sons Spencer had a good deal of aver
sion to meeting company, and found
the delivery of anything like a public
address usually intolerable during all
his later years. He has also a little to
say about certain very well-known ex
periences of " double consciousness " ;
but fears, pessimism, an altered view
of life, any genuine losing of touch
with himself, any deeper loss of con-
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HERBERT SPENCER

trol over his associated processes, and
many other of the usual complaints of
the nervous student — these are all nota
bly absent. The whole story suggests
a very stubborn, and doubtless in part
constitutional, and so incurable, defect,
but one that, after all, was much more
superficial in its significance than he
himself supposed. Upon his work it
further reacted by increasing his im
penetrable isolation from all trains and
modes of thought that did not directly
interest him. Since he could read so
little, why try to understand' books that
could not instruct him! Since his
nerve-centres were so ill supplied, as
he assumed, with the needed blood,
why exhaust them by opening his mind
to ideas that were foreign to his own?
His "ear-stoppers" thus remain typical
of his persistent closing of his mind to
all considerations which did not either

support his predetermined theories, or
58

else help him occasionally to reassert
himself in vigorous polemic.

Apart from his invalidism, Spencer
(as appears from his letters to his
father and to his friends, and in his
own story) early showed traits which
remain throughout, at every stage of
his career, very unchanging. Free
from all the ordinary emotional ex
cesses of weaker men, free, also, from
vehement personal affections, yet kindly
disposed, passively benevolent, and in
this sense humane, he was most of all
characterized not by his sentiments,
but by his ways of thinking and modes
of action. An unaggressive but un
conquerable stubbornness of opinion
forbade him to acquire ideas by any
method but his own. He inquired
keenly, and into a very great variety of
subjects. Yet what is usually meant
by great breadth of mind is not to be
asserted of him. For he could adapt
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his thoughts to no mental undertaking
which he himself had not first prede
termined; and his understanding of
other people's intellectual interests was
always of the slightest degree that was
possible in so well-informed a man. In
action he was cool and deliberate ; but
any plan which he had once deter
mined upon dominated him as a sort
of calm and passionless obsession.
Thus when, in middle life, he had
once resolved to see the eruption of
Vesuvius without the aid of the guides
(whose fees offended him) , the dangers
of hot lava had no importance for him,
until he had passed through and seen
what he came to see. In youth, there
fore, so long as he looked to other men
for employment, he changed his em
ployers frequently, and seemed a " roll
ing-stone." But so soon as he made up
his mind to produce his system, noth
ing could thenceforth distract him from
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the single great task. In his engineer
ing years he was mechanically ingen
ious, and he records a considerable list
of inventions. He solved mathemati
cal problems, and discovered a geomet
rical theorem of some importance, but
never went far in mathematics. He
made natural history collections, but
never became a naturalist. He per
formed physical experiments, but was
no thorough-going physicist. He paused
at the edge of political activities, but
avoided public life. He records that
he never puzzled over his problems.
His intellectual processes, so far as his
invalidism left them free, were auto
matic, pleasing, untroubled. At last
they formed themselves into a system
atic plan. The synthetic philosophy
was the outcome of this plan.

Spencer records how each of the
leading ideas of his system grew up in
his mind. First came a love for trac-
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ing the causes of things, a love which
early led him to the notion that Na
ture permits no miracles, that all proc
esses of Nature are unbroken and
continuous, and that all which is beyond
the realm of discoverable law is alto
gether unknowable. Second came an
assurance that, even as he himself was
of an independent spirit, so no man's
liberty ought to be hindered, so long
as such a man did not interfere with
his neighbor's liberty. Third came,
slowly growing in his mind, the as
surance that the " development theory "
must account for living things, by
means of a natural process, just as
causation in general was needed to ac
count for every other natural event
and product. Next came the notion
that, in particular, the life of the mind
must be understood as a development,
determined by natural causes, and con
nected with the development of all the
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phenomena of life. Finally came the
conviction that a full and coherent
theory of Nature, in which the organic
and inorganic worlds were united by the
working of universal laws, not only
would explain, so far as that was pos
sible, the growth of things, but also
would furnish a systematic and com
plete foundation for his own never
changing individualistic ethics, and for
his sturdy, old-fashioned British liberal
ism. In this way, the main work of
Spencer's life came to be an effort to
bring into synthesis an organic theory
of the unity of the evolutionary process,
with a doctrine regarding the freedom
and the rights of the individual which
had come down to him from an age
when evolution and the organic unity
of things had indeed interested Eng
lishmen but little. This particular
synthesis of organic evolution with in
dividual independence remains one of
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the most paradoxical, and consequently
most instructive, features of Spencer's
teaching.

To go more into detail, this evolution
of Spencer's own main ideas, as he care
fully narrates the process, occurred
somewhat as follows : In childhood,
the idea of the supernatural was rapidly
sent into the background of his mind by
that search for causes which his father
so constantly cultivated in him. Before
he knew why, he had learned, quite
without his father's intending this re
sult, to disbelieve in miracles ; and so in
early manhood, " the current creed and
its associated story of creation" came,
by insensible steps, to be abandoned.
In consequence, a " belief in evolution
at large" was soon "latent." For, as
Spencer says: "The doctrine of the
universality of natural causation has
for its inevitable corollary the doctrine

that the Universe and all things in it
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have reached their present forms
through successive stages physically
necessitated." This " latent " assurance
first began to become explicit when,
at twenty years of age, Spencer read
Ly ell's " Principles of Geology." One
of the chapters of Lyell was devoted
to refuting Lamarck's theory of the
origin of species; and this chapter,
as Spencer tells us, " had the effect of
giving me a decided leaning to" just
such views. That is, as he tells us,
Lyell's chapter brought to his conscious
ness, by contrast, what his own belief
in the uniformity of Nature really im
plied as to the origin of organic forms.
Two years later, in 1842, when
Spencer's political and ethical interests
had led him to attempt a defence of
the " tendency to carry individual free
dom as far as possible," and when he
consequently wrote a series of letters
to the " Nonconformist " newspaper on
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" The Proper Sphere of Government,"
there was shown, in these letters, as he
tells us, " an unhesitating belief that
the phenomena of both individual
life and social life conform to law."
There was also expressed the view that
the functions, the instincts, and the
organs of any creature, whether animal,
plant, or man, are "dependent upon
the position in which the creature is
placed." "Surround it," continues
Spencer in one of these letters, speak
ing of any such creature, " with circum
stances which preclude the necessity
for any one of its faculties, and that
faculty will become gradually impaired.
. . . Place a tribe of animals in a
situation where one of their attributes
is unnecessary — take away its natural
exercise, — dimmish its activity, and
you will gradually destroy its power.
Successive generations will see the
faculty, or instinct, or whatever it
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may be, become gradually weaker, and
an ultimate degeneracy of the race
will inevitably ensue. All this is true
of Man." This, then, was his early
way of expressing himself. Spencer,
at this time, accordingly read the les
son of such tendencies in the form of
the assertion, explicitly made in these
letters, that man's proper adaptation
to his social functions will best occur
if his relations to society are not arti
ficially interfered with, and if he is
not protected by the state from the
necessity of exercising his individual
powers, and of finding his own rela
tively " stable equilibrium " with his
social world. Here, as Spencer points
out, are already the germs of the whole
later theory. A natural process of
adaptation gradually determines the
functions, and, in some greater or less
measure, the structures, of living beings.
This process is an instance of some all-
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pervasive system of physical law. It
leads, if undisturbed, to certain condi
tions of stable equilibrium which in
themselves tend to be good for the
creature directly concerned. The social
lesson is that the state ought not to in
terfere with this natural process of the
evolution of the social individual.

In rewriting the discussions thus
begun for his "Social Statics," in 1850,
Spencer recognized that alike in living
organisms and in societies " progress "
is from conditions wherein " like parts "
perform " like functions," to conditions
wherein "unlike parts" perform "un
like functions," — in brief, that " in
these cases progress is from the uniform
to the multiform. ' ' In the immediately
subsequent years, the Milne-Edwards
conception of " the physiological divi
sion of labor," and Von Baer's formula
that the development of an organism is

a change from " homogeneity of struc-
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ture to heterogeneity of structure,"
were both added to Spencer's range of
evolutionary conceptions. The ideas
thus acquired were quickly general
ized so as to receive application to the
philosophy of literary style, to psy
chological phenomena generally, and
to the evolution of social institutions.
As Spencer proceeded, in 1854-1855,
to the completion of the first edition
of his " Psychology," he was " suddenly
led to the perception ' ' that the ad
vance " from the homogeneous to the
heterogenous is a universal trait of
progress, inorganic, organic, and super-
organic." The " multiplication of
effects," and "the instability of the
homogeneous ' ' were, by 1857, both of
them in his mind as the "causes" of
this "universal transformation." In
1858 he definitely opposed to the " proc
ess of evolution" that of "dissolu
tion," and regarded the rhythm of these
69

processes as a mechanical necessity
to which all teleological interpretations
of evolution must be subordinated.
The conceptions of the transition from
"the definite to the indefinite," and
of the part which " integration " plays
in evolution, gradually became clear to
Spencer, partly during the course of
the development of the " Psychology,"
partly after the issue of the first
edition of the " First Principles." The
" System of Synthetic Philosophy" was
begun in 1860. The new conceptions
which Darwin's " Origin of Species "
furnished, in the course of the same
year, were very generously welcomed
and considered, but were rather too
easily assimilated by Spencer to his
own generalizations. And in 1864, at
length, the final great step in the
organization of Spencer's evolutionary
theory was taken when he found
" suddenly disclosed " " the truth that
70

integration is a primary process and
differentiation a secondary process;
and that thus, while the formation of
a coherent aggregate is the universal
trait of Evolution, the increase of
heterogeneity, necessarily subsequent,
is but an almost universal trait; the
one being unconditional and the other
conditional." What was still further
added, in 1867, related rather to a
matter of detail.

One who reviews this process in its
relation to the general history of the
conception of evolution in recent times
is afresh impressed with the often ob
served fact that the centre of Spencer's
philosophical interests always remained
somewhat remote from the matters
which mainly engaged either the popu
lar or the scientific attention during the
years when the evolutionary contro
versy was warmest. The popular
readers of Darwin and of other evolu-
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tionists were usually most concerned
with the questions: "Has there been
any transformation of species at all ? "
" Is man descended from the lower
animals ? " "Is the human mind, or,
again, conscience, or is religion, a
purely natural product of evolution I "
The scientific men who took part in
the Darwinian controversy were also
often interested in more broadly specu
lative questions. But their own tech
nical tasks led them to lay more
emphasis, during the years since 1860,
upon such questions as : " Has Dar
win's (or any other) theory brought
the origin or the transformation of
species definitely within the range of
legitimate scientific inquiry I ' "Is
Darwin's account, or (in later stages
of the discussion) is some rival account
of the factors to which the origin of
species is due, probably a correct or

an adequate one I " " Do the new

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theories aid us in formulating definite
hypotheses that help us in other
branches of special inquiry than those
to which they have so far been applied! "
" What do we know about the ancestry
of man!"

Now, Spencer's philosophical inter
ests had, as their main object, decidedly
different topics from any of these. The
just mentioned questions of the more
popular type never gave him serious
concern after once his early years were
passed. For that some natural process
was responsible for the gradual develop
ment of living beings, and so of man,
and of all mental and social phenomena,
had appeared sure to him, as an inevit
able result of the general belief in
causation, already during the 40's.
It appeared sure to him for the same
reasons that made some sort of evolu
tion acceptable to the first philosophers
of Greece. It was so far, for him, no
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result of scientific induction. It was
simply a consequence of his now settled
habit of believing in the existence of a
natural cause for everything. On the
other hand, the more special Darwinian
and anti-Darwinian arguments regard
ing the factors of organic evolution,
much as they later interested him,
never reached the first grade of im
portance in his mind. He contributed
to such discussions, late in his career,
some of the best of his shorter essays.
But as a philosopher he was only by
the way concerned with such things.
He was rather busy, in the main, with
the finding of a formula general enough
to cover the whole range of evolution
ary phenomena, and with proving that
this formula correctly described the
" cause " of evolution, so far as that
cause is knowable at all. This " cause "
is something much more general than

is any one of the hypothetical special

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" factors of evolution." As a philoso
pher, Spencer is therefore most of all
responsible for this general formula
and for undertaking to show that it
applied to all sorts of evolutionary
processes.

75

Ill

AFD so we come, at length, in our
account of Spencer, to an at
tempt at a restatement of the
sense of Spencer's formula. Spencer's
own peculiar vocabulary is as chronic
an incident of his books as his head-
symptoms were chronic incidents of
his life. Let us try, for the moment,
to use as far as we can our own words,
while still stating, as faithfully as we
may, his case. Our words may be not
as good as his; but change is often
restful.

In the world at large, matter and
energy (so Spencer points out) are con
stantly passing from one configuration
or arrangement to another. As this

ceaselessly takes place, particular things
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— suns, systems, planets, continents,
forests, plants, animals, men, societies,
mental states — appear and pass away.
If now we try to look over the whole
range of the vast process thus presented
to us, we observe that what happens
can be reduced, in its larger outlines,
to two opposed special processes, which
more or less rhythmically take each
other's place in any given part of the
world, according to the prevalent con
ditions that the relations of this part
of the world to the rest determine.
One of these processes occurs when
bodies collect more closely together,
cool, condense, contract, solidify, stif
fen, harden, while the energy that they
formerly contained is, in part (often
in very great part), lost, being spread
out as radiant energy over vast spaces,
or conducted away to other bodies.
Wherever such processes of " integra
tion" predominate, there occurs what
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we shall call evolution. The other proc
ess occurs when bodies get expanded,
liquefied, vaporized, evaporated, scat
tered, sundered, widely distributed.
This process, wherever it predominates,
constitutes the primary feature of what
we call dissolution. It can occur only
when into a system of bodies energy
is introduced (by radiation or other
wise) from other systems, or when
collisions, or similar events, lead to
distributions of energy which involve
local heating, expansion, and the like.
Our main attention is to be devoted to
the one of these processes, which is
called evolution.

The gathering together, the conden
sation, the contraction, and the harden
ing of masses of matter may go on
uncomplicated by other processes. So
it is, for instance, when vapor con
denses and falls in drops on a rainy
day, or when an asteroid is formed (if
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one is so formed) by the condensation
of a mass of cooling material of nebu
lar origin. But sometimes, while this
uncomplicated or " primary " process
of evolution is going on, there also
occur ' ' secondary ' ; processes, due to
the fact that one part of the mass,
which as a whole grows denser, is not
placed or influenced in the same way
in which another part is placed or in
fluenced. Thus, the outside of a cool
ing mass may have a crust form upon
it, while the inside is still liquid ; the
crystals which form as an oversaturated
solution cools may gather at the bot
tom of a vessel, while the top remains
clear liquid; and so on indefinitely.
It is these "secondary" changes which
are responsible for what we usually
regard as the most important phe
nomena of evolution. That the second
ary changes can become so important
as they do become is due to the fact
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that, as masses of matter condense, they
often form clumps which are in an in
termediate state between the stage of
absolute hardness or solidity on the
one hand, and the state of an abso
lutely free internal mobility of the
parts of the mass on the other hand.
A somewhat viscous body is more or
less plastic to changes which are im
pressed upon it. But, on the other
hand, it is able to retain for some time
the traces of such changes. Examples
of " plastic bodies " of this general type
are numerous. Our planet itself, as a
whole, is such a " plastic body." Its
crust is neither unchangeably hard and
soldified, nor yet so soft that the traces
of what has happened to or in this
crust easily pass away. The human
brain, " wax to receive, and marble to
retain," is a peculiarly complex instance
of a plastic body. Whatever happens

to its sense-organs may impress it, and
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normally does so — so delicately yield
ing are its minutest structures. Yet it
is as retentive as it is impressible. A
body can possess some degree of this
plasticity only when it is not too dense
and stiff in structure, and when it con
sequently contains a good deal of molec
ular energy; while, at the same time,
it must be stiff enough to resist strain
to such an extent as is needed to enable
it to keep the traces of what happens
to it.

Now, especially in the case of the
plastic bodies, the " secondary '
changes aforesaid (changes which go
on, indeed, chiefly when condensation
predominates in the region of the world
which is in question, although these
changes are not mere cases of con
densation) follow a law of the follow
ing type.

(1) If the parts of any large body are
at any moment as nearly alike, in some
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specific respect, as they then can ~be (e.g.,
if they are, through the action of some
cause, made for a moment as nearly as
possible of the same temperature), then,
unless the causes which especially
determined the occurrence of just this
state persist, it is certain that this
relative " homogeneity " will prove " un
stable." That is, a large body, if it be
for a time of the same temperature
through and through, will cool un
equally in its different parts; for the
different parts will be differently ex
posed to the surrounding world. In
consequence it will be a general rule
of an evolutionary process that the
energy which is passing out of the
various parts of a system will pass at
various rates, while the condensation
will proceed also at various rates in
the different parts concerned, so that
there will be a constant tendency of

the evolving mass to develop within

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itself more and more differences. If
the mass in question were a gas or a
liquid, the results of this inner differ
entiation would be lost as fast as they
appeared, since nothing would there
be abiding. But if the body in question,
or the mass of bodies, is in a plastic
condition, the results of many or all
of these successive differentiations will
be retained in such forms as perma
nent shells, rinds, and crusts; or as
wrinkles, furrows, variations of inter
nal consistency of structure ; or as spe
cially differentiated types of movement ;
or as habits of a brain, as customs of a
society ; and so on endlessly.

(2) Meanwhile, in its relations to
the surrounding world, the differen
tiating and plastic mass, as it thus
ages, will react by its various structure
and consistency upon the play of the
external forces which impinge upon it.

As the sand bank, once formed, deflects
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the very stream that deposited it, so
the differentiating plastic body, as its
parts grow more various, will in its
turn render more various the new
influences to which it is subject. The
resulting "multiplication of effects"
will be cumulative, and will tend more
and more to the differentiation of the
plastic body. And so one explains
how a planet, first liquid, and of nearly
equal heat throughout, gradually com
plicates its structure as it cools. Each
new differentiation of its crust is re
tained by this plastic body as it slowly
grows more solid; and these traces of
past differentiation react upon the in
fluences of air, sunlight, ocean, until
the climates of deserts and mountain
ranges, of seashores and of the interiors
of continents, become more and more
various. Equally one explains, in
Spencer's opinion, 'why an organism, a

human brain, or a social order shows,
84

up to its limits, a constant increase of
variety in its structure and in its
functions.

(3) But progressive differentiation is
not all that results in the course of
this secondary evolution. The ener
gies within and about a plastic body,
as it slowly integrates, tend not
merely to the formation of a confused
variety, but to the evolution of order
amidst the confusion. For, as Spen
cer insists, there are forms of energy
which act like a stream of water, or
like a current of air, or like a common
and pervasive social tendency. These
forms of energy are to be considered
as groups of "like forces." They
will always be present when a plastic
body is subject to secondary evolution;
since all the forms of fluid action,
some of the forms of radiant energy, the
gravitation due to the neighborhood
of large masses, etc., are found wher-
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ever bodies are undergoing differen
tiation. Now these more massive forms
of energy will move or will transform
"like" objects "in like ways" and
"unlike" objects "in unlike ways."
The results will be the sort of " seg
regation " (i.e., of sorting) which one
sees when light dust is separated
from heavy dust by the wind, or
when light sediment is separated from
heavy sediment by the action of streams
and of gravity, or when the approach
of a magnet segregates iron particles
from a confused aggregate, or when
men of a roving disposition are segre
gated from home-staying folk by the
exciting attraction of some newly dis
covered country or gold mine ; or when
the soldiers go together to the war,
leaving wives and children at home.
To this general factor, endlessly compli
cated in its working by the conditions
of organic or of social structure, Spen-
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cer attributes the fact that the plastic
bodies (subject as they are not only to
forces which diversify their parts and
activities, but also to forces which tend
to group like objects and parts to
gether, and to sunder unlike objects
and parts) tend in the long run to
attain what he calls a "definite"
structure and arrangement. A " defi
nite ' ' structure is one wherein the out
lines are clear, the parts divided by
sharp boundaries from one another,
and the whole not only differentiated,
but arranged in orderly fashion. This
" segregation " process may be viewed
as a special union of the general
process of condensation or of " inte
gration " upon which the " primary
evolution" depends, with the process
of differentiation itself.

(4) As a consequence of the processes
thus described, evolution, in the cases
where it is both primary and second-
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ary, has a character which may be
summed up as follows: Evolution is
the consolidation of a mass of matter,
attended by a loss of some of the
energy that this mass contained ; while,
as this consolidation takes place, both
the matter concerned and the energy
which it still retains pass from a state
in which there is little firmness of
structure, little orderliness of ar
rangement, little sharpness of contour,
and much inner resemblance of part and
part, to a state in which there is great
firmness of structure, much orderliness
of arrangement, much sharpness of
contour, and much inner variety and
difference of part and part. This
whole process, as Spencer insists, is
due to the fact that, as the mass con
cerned loses some of its energy, the
different regions of the consolidating
aggregate, being differently affected by
the surroundings, tend to grow more

HERBERT SPENCER

and more unlike, while the more per
manent forces that play upon the whole
tend to sort out the parts of the whole,
and to dispose them in more or less
sharply sundered layers or sections ; and
while, too, in case the mass in question
is a sufficiently plastic body, it not only
undergoes these changes, but as it ages
preserves the traces of former changes,
so that the latter become the founda
tion of a cumulative increase of former
tendencies.

The evolutionary process thus defined
must have its limits in case of each
limited mass of matter. When these
limits are once reached, the no longer
plastic body will be in such equilibrium
with its surroundings as to resist, by
its inner consistency of structure and
of movement, such changes as these
surroundings are able to bring to pass
in it. This state of equilibrium, how
ever, will not be everlasting. The once
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plastic body, now incapable of further
organization, will finally meet con
ditions to which, its structure is not
adapted. Forces, such as attrition,
collision, and the like, will play upon
it and destroy it. Dissolution will
succeed evolution.

90

IV

SUCH is, in outline, Spencer's gen
eral view concerning the charac
ter and causes of evolution, and
concerning the place of evolution in
Nature. A doctrine of such generality
and inclusiveness could not be stated
without requiring from its author an
exposition of many other fundamen
tally important theses. The theory ap
peared upon its face to supplant any
theological account of the origin of
natural phenomena. Hence it was
necessary to make explicit the author's
attitude towards religious problems.
This undertaking, in its turn, demanded
the statement of a theory of knowledge.
The result of these requirements was
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the section of Spencer's "First Prin
ciples" which dealt with "The Un
knowable." On the other hand, if the
general doctrine was to be applied to
psychological phenomena, a theory of
the relations between mental and ma
terial processes was required, so far as
these relations, in Spencer's opinion,
belonged to the realm of the " know-
able." Furthermore, a summary ac
count of the type of mental evolution
was needed in order to enable one to
compare this type with that which the
general formula described. This need
was met by Spencer's interpretation
of mental life as an " adjustment of
internal to external relations," — an in
terpretation which, abstract as its for
mulation was, has proved of no small
service in directing the course of sub
sequent psychological inquiry. When,
in addition, the general formula of evo
lution was to be applied in the socio-
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logical field, more special theories of
the various types of social phenomena
were needed. And here Spencer's
doctrines as to the origin and evolu
tion of religion, and his analyses of the
militant and industrial types of social
evolution, were the results of efforts to
meet this requirement. Finally, the
formula had to be applied in the region
to which it appeared the least adapted,
namely, in the region of ethics. While
Spencer, conceiving ethical activities in
terms of the tendency towards individ
ual and social " equilibrium," was able
to bring to pass various connections
between the type of change which he
attributed to a plastic body undergoing
secondary evolution and the type of
change which is to be observed in char
acter and in conduct as men's lives
harmonize and consolidate, his ethical
theory is much more the comment of
an old-fashioned English Liberal upon
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modern social conditions than it is a
new result which evolutionary science
contributes to human knowledge. Yet,
in all these regions of inquiry, Spencer
was led to special theses which stand
side by side with his statement of the
formula of evolution, and so constitute
parts of his contribution to philosophy.
Most of all, however, he himself felt
that the formula of evolution was his
most important contribution to the
"unification of science."

When we attempt to estimate the
value of the system of ideas which we
have thus sketched, it is well at once
to lay aside certain controversial tests
by which Spencer's opponents have al
together too often sought to try him.
In the end, a system of this sort must
be judged in the light of what it tries
to accomplish, and not in the light of
considerations which are foreign to
it. Thus, for instance, as myself an
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idealist, I find myself profoundly at
variance with Spencer's theory of
knowledge, and with his doctrine of
the Unknowable. Yet, viewing the
man historically, I have to see that his
concern with the problem of knowl
edge was, comparatively speaking, of
incidental importance to him ; that he
never attacked the problem with any
very serious and reflective interest in
finding where the problem lay; and
that his elaborately stated analyses of
"The Universal Postulate," of the
" Theories of the Metaphysicians," and
of the " Relativity of Knowledge " had
their place in his exposition merely as
conscientious but uninstructed prelim
inary efforts to clear the way for quite
other considerations, in which he was
positively interested. Otherwise, these
discussions of knowledge and being ex
pressed his classic limitation to certain
very simple intuitions, — the whole-
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some, straightforward intuitions of an
English Radical, who, having early
seen that we can know about natural
causation, but cannot know anything
about theology, and that we can know
our rights and our duties, but cannot
make out what it is that interests some
people in Plato, in Kant, and in all
such speculators, — henceforth reflects
upon ultimate problems only for the
sake of bringing to sharp expression
the beliefs that he never learned to
question or to analyze.

On this side, then, Spencer's limita
tions are as obvious as it is unfair to
make one's judgment of him depend
ent upon them. What he undertook
to do was to reduce to unity certain
aspects of the world of empirical facts.
That his effort to do this turned upon
fundamental ideas which he was never
able critically to scrutinize is of less
importance in estimating the value of
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his principal formula. The real ques
tion in case of Spencer is, How far
did he help people to understand
evolution?

In trying to answer this question we
must again beware of making our judg
ment turn mainly upon his tendency
to apply formulas derived from mate
rial phenomena to the description of
mental and moral processes. What
ever our view of the nature of things,
we all must admit that, since human
mental processes are associated with
the functions of material organisms, it
is useful, for certain purposes, to ap
proach the natural history of mind
from the physical side, and to describe
psychological processes, so far as that
is possible, in terms of their neutral
and motor expressions and accompani
ments. Hence, if anything general can
be said about the evolution of my body,
that will give me some propositions
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that I must use in describing the evo
lution of my mind. A true idealist
fears least of all such use of physical
formulations as an aid in psychology.
For he knows that when you are study
ing phenomena, the best way to vindi
cate the sovereignty of reason in the
world is to try to describe, in the most
exact and orderly way that you can,
the lawful connections between mental
and material phenomena. The closer
and the more exact you show such con
nections to be, the nearer you come to
illustrating the reasonableness of things
in the order of Nature. Moreover,
since physical phenomena are more
describable than are mental phenomena,
natural science approaches the latter
through the former. Hence whoever
regards the evolution of mind as an
incident of some physical process of
consolidation or of mechanical differ
entiation offers us, of course, no ulti-
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mate truth about the inmost nature of
being; but he also asserts something
which no idealist, who recognizes what
the business of human science is, should
regard as in the least inconsistent with
a spiritual interpretation of reality.
For, if such a formula is true of the
phenomena of matter and mind, it will
remain true precisely of — phenomena.
Now, Spencer's formula was intended
to hold true of phenomena only. Fur
thermore, that Spencer's business, as
a student of phenomena, was with
"mechanism," in the general sense,
rather than with " teleology," I also
fully believe. He ought not, therefore,
to be condemned merely because he
undertook to conceive evolution in me
chanical terms. He would have been
false to his just philosophical purpose
if he had conceived of it otherwise.

The fair question in regard to Spen
cer is, then, this: " Is his ' unification '
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of the purely phenomenal processes
of evolution a generalization at once
sound and enlightening? ' This is the
question upon whose true answer his
main value for philosophy depends.

The answer to the question is not
simple. In favor of Spencer's formula,
as he states it, stands the unquestion
able fact that the transformations of
energy, in the physical world, are all of
them, so far as we can now see, appar
ently instances of a single describable
process, which, as a phenomenal proc
ess, is invariant in type, whether it
takes place in stars or in plants or in
poets. This process the modern doc
trine of energy, which was very incom
pletely developed when Spencer began
to work out his ideas, has undertaken
to formulate in two main propositions,
of which one deals with the permanence
of the quantity of the energy of any

closed physical system within which
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such transformations take place, while
the second proposition defines the di
rection which the transformations of
energy take in a given system, under
given conditions (as, for instance, when
heat energy tends to pass from a hotter
to a colder body). It is unquestionable
that any evolutionary process which
takes place must exemplify both these
principles, but must especially illus
trate the second of the two. For the
second, having to do with the direc
tions which types of change follow,
defines what are, in general, and on the
whole, irreversible series of transforma
tions of energy, so far as the total sys
tems concerned are taken into account.
And no characteristic of the evolution
ary processes is more obvious than the
fact that, in all the important cases,
they also are of an irreversible type.
An organism ages, but cannot return
to the type of its own early condition.
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It undergoes dissolution, but never
grows young again. There is, then, no
doubt, an universal formula, which in
cludes all the evolutionary processes,
in so far as they have any describable
physical aspects whatever; and this
formula is at least in part furnished to
us by the theory of energy.

But the general theory of energy,
taken by itself, is too wide in its appli
cation to give us any physical defini
tion of what distinguishes evolutionary
processes from those of the type of dis
solution. Spencer accordingly singles
out, as his evolutionary processes, those
instances in Nature where consolidation
predominates. Such processes go on,
as instances of the second principle of
the theory of energy, wherever a sys
tem whose energies are upon higher
levels than are the levels of the energy
of its surroundings is on the whole

losing what Spencer prefers to call its
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"contained motion." But, as Spencer
sees, the most of the evolutionary proc
esses, and in particular the organic
processes, involve something which is
quite different from mere consolidation.
He prefers to speak of this other as
pect of the processes in question as the
" secondary evolution " of the plastic
bodies. But hereupon appears one of
the most obvious difficulties of the doc
trine as stated. In case of organic
evolution, consolidation, in the main,
appears, not as a primary feature of this
sort of evolution, — a feature to which
the differentiation of organs is but an in
cident, — but as itself a comparatively
incidental feature ; while on the whole,
the very reverse of consolidation now
predominates. In general, organic evo
lution involves the taking in of energy
from the environment, and the consequent
presence of various anabolic processes
which are, in type, the reverse of the
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consolidations which take place when
bodies cool, stiffen, and grow harder.
Similar assertions can be made as to
social evolution, when the means of
communication, the high training and
nutrition of individuals, the physical
motives which work against the crowd
ing of masses in single rooms, and so
on, tend to introduce more movements
and wider separations within the struc
ture of a society. It is indeed true
that, in all such cases, there are vari
ous " integrations " which Spencer can
easily point out, which accompany
these processes of increasing mobility
and expansion. Tissues harden, cities
grow bigger, crowds in theatres grow
more numerous, at the same time when
the structure of the organisms in ques
tion, or of the social groups, also shows
many signs of absorbing new energies,
and in so far of growing less consoli
dated in its internal structure. But it
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is only necessary to consider how the
sun's heat is the supporter of all
the organic evolutionary processes on
the earth's surface in order to see that,
in the organic world, the absorption of
energy, and the consequent tendency
of masses of matter to assume a less
consolidated structure than the struc
ture which characterizes their immedi
ate surroundings in the inorganic world
together constitute, on the whole, the
predominant feature of evolution in
this realm, while the consolidation
which bones and horns and hardened
skin and crowded cities exemplify is
rather the subordinate feature of the
evolution of the living organisms.

If this be so, how can evolution be
described as a single process, of which
consolidation is the primary, while
what occurs in the plastic bodies is the
secondary aspect! Have we not rather
one process in the inorganic world when
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the sun, losing heat, shrinks, and an
other, and relatively opposed process,
in the organic world, when the radiant
energy of this very sun, caught by the
earth and the air in springtime, leads
to the manifold processes of expansive
life which then occur as the climate
grows warmer? One of these processes
is predominantly a shrinking, the other
a swelling. Or is it well to say : Evo
lution is primarily a process of the loss
of energy, and so of consolidation, but
secondarily (in plastic bodies) a process
which includes much absorption of new
energy and much assumption of less
consolidated structure on the part of
matter! Do I evolve when I primarily
shrink, but secondarily swell? If so,
what is my evolution, — the shrinking
or the swelling?

Spencer has ready his answer, partly,
no doubt, in the just mentioned ex
amples of consolidation occurring (as
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one part of the life-process) in many
organisms. He may add, also, that
unless the sun were shrinking, the liv
ing organisms would not get any new
energy to absorb. Hence, he may still
insist, the shrinking is the "primary,"
the expanding aspect of the anabolic
processes of living things is the " sec
ondary" aspect.

But one answers: "Am I aided in
understanding evolution as a single
process by thus merely coming to see
that it is rather a complex of mutually
opposed processes? " I should indeed
be aided by just such an insight if
Spencer told me wherein lay the
unity of these opposed processes when
they together constitute evolution.
But he does not tell me this, except
in so far as he shows me that both
kinds of processes, the shrinking of
the sun and the swelling of the living
matter, are consequences of the all-
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pervasive energy-process. But that
energy-process includes dissolution as
well as evolution. Wherein am I
then yet wiser as to just what consti
tutes evolution!

Again, to say that the solar system
as a whole is steadily losing energy by
radiation, and is in so far " integrating,"
while the heating of the earth's surface
by the sun's rays is only local, — this is
not to show me that the first of these
processes is a primary aspect of evolu
tion, while the other is only the second
ary aspect of evolution. For Spencer's
formula seems to say that all evolution
is first (and unconditionally) integra
tion, while, sometimes (conditionally),
evolution is also the secondary evolu
tion of the plastic bodies. But what I
seem to find is that not all evolution is
integration, since secondary evolution
often means the very reverse of inte
gration. In vain does one add: "But
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the secondary evolution is a local inci
dent; the primary evolution is more
widespread." I was not asking to learn
what was local and what not. What I
was promised was a single consistent
formula for the general description, and
then for the special types of the process
of evolution. I can therefore indeed
see that, if all evolution is a, while, in
addition, some of it is not only a but also
5, — then the unity of the formula is
kept, in that " primary " evolution,
which is a, is a genus, whereof the a
that is 5, viz., secondary evolution, is
then a species. But what I find in
stead of this is that primary evolution
is indeed a, while secondary evolution
is in large part not a, but the very re
verse of a. Where, now, is the unity
of the formula!

One fears, then, that this is so far
the main result : — Evolution is a con
solidation, except in those highly im-
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portant cases where it is an expansion.
Often it is both.

Is this result contradictory? Not at
all. Many a process keeps its unity by
precisely such an union of opposing
tendencies. But the formula is so far
simply unenlightening, because it does
not tell me wherein this unity lies.

Let us pass to the secondary evolu
tion considered in itself. It involves
two great features, — differentiation
and the increase of defmiteness through
segregation. The differentiation is a
cumulative process, due to the fact that
a plastic body keeps the traces of what
has happened to it, and so constantly
prepares a basis for new varieties of
effects to be produced upon its various
parts. The segregation is due to the
sorting types of forces, such as were
before exemplified in our summary.

Now we have here again two types

of processes which are often opposed
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to each other. The differentiating
forces of erosion break off great rocks,
and also smaller particles, which so far
confusedly differ from one another as
a glacier carries them down the moun
tain valley. Later on the mountain
torrents, and later still the rivers of
the plain, sort out the various kinds
of sediment. The subsequent mud-
deposits, stratified and set in order,
present less appearance of heterogene
ity than would the mass of unaltered
glacial debris. Nature thus smooths
over rough outlines, arranges " like ' '
things together, wears away varieties,
so that clear contours appear ; in brief,
reduces as well as increases varieties.
It is so in society. Circumstances dif
ferentiate men, and the " touch of Na
ture" makes them one again. My
mind differentiates as I learn, and sim
plifies as I come to understand. My
conduct is more heterogeneous when I
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am learning to dance than it is when I
find out how to dance smoothly.

Now one, of course, need not tell
Spencer all this. He knows and re
peatedly illustrates it all. Nor need
one talk of contradictions. A true
process of evolution no doubt unites
opposed tendencies. But what one
wants to know is, What principle, in
any given case, gives the opposing tenden
cies that unity f This is what Spencer's
account does not tell us. Segregation
tends, in certain respects, towards a
reduction of the degree of differentia
tion. What constitutes the true evolu
tionary union of these two processes?

In sum what one learns seems to be
that, in general, the evolution of the
plastic bodies involves increasing dif
ferentiation, except where differenti
ation is diminished, and increased
segregation, except where the incident-
forces mix things. Now, all this is
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unquestionably true ; but does it tell us
how to distinguish the true evolution
ary combination of these opposed ten
dencies from that combination which
leads towards dissolution?

The vagueness of the Spencerian
description of evolution renders it pos
sible, of course, to conceive the form
ula so interpreted as to fit any special
case that may arise. But what one
misses is any guide, in the formula, for
the precise definition of types of cases
in advance of such special adjustments.
Any permanently and positively useful
generalization, in a field like this, must
be such as to define for us, not merely
something abstract enough to be true
whatever happens, but a more or less
complete and exact series of ideal cases
to which the formula can be deduc
tively applied, in such wise as to show
how the predicates used in stating the
generalization are to be specified to

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suit each of these ideal cases. The
law of gravitation, the theory of energy
— these are not formulas such as: "All
bodies tend to approach one another,"
or " Everything changes." But they
are formulas that can be applied, de
ductively, to predict in detail the char
acters of any one of an infinite series
of ideal cases (such as planets moving
about suns, masses of gas cooling, etc.).
Now, nobody expects, as yet, any
mathematical formula for evolution.
But just because every case of evolu
tion is obviously a case where mutually
opposing tendencies somehow balance
one another, and combine into higher
unities, the requirement for the situa
tion is, not that the philosopher should
tell us (truly enough) that evolution
involves both shrinkings and swellings,
both mixings and sortings, both vari
ety and order, — but that he should

show us how these various tendencies
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are, in the various types of evolution
ary process, kept in that peculiar
balance and unity which, each time,
constitutes an evolution. This is what
Spencer seems not to have done. He
was quite right in thinking that a
mechanical theory of the types of evo
lutionary processes is a needed scien
tific theory. For evolution, in the
phenomenal world, must be reduced
to physical laws. His great merit is
to have attempted such a theory at all.
He aimed at great things in a serious
and frank and straightforward way.
He stated one notable problem for the
coming age. And to have done even
this is a great merit.

In sum, Spencer appears as a phi
losopher of a beautiful logical naivete.
Generalization was an absolutely simple
affair for him. If you found a bag big
enough to hold all the facts, that was

an unification of science. If, mean-
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while, you were ready to present a
beautifully ordered series of illustra
tions of your theory, this showed that
your facts themselves were conceived
with a due respect to their own orderly
theoretical unification. But orderly ex
position, which Spencer always had at
perfect control, is not necessarily the
same as the perfection of one's theory.
The business of a theory of phenomena
is the arrangement of systems of facts
in ideal serial orders, according to con
cepts which themselves determine both
the ordering of each series and the pre
cise relations of its members to one an
other. Spencer's theory of evolution
does not determine the relations of the
essential processes of evolution to one
another, does not define their inner
unity, and does not enable us to con
ceive a series of types of evolutionary
processes in orderly relations to one

another.

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Yet, as one may reply, he was a
pioneer. This is true. His value as
such a pioneer has still to be seen in
the future of thought. His beautiful
straightforwardness of personal char
acter, his noble independence of spirit,
his loyalty to what he conceived to be
his task, his humanity, his advocacy
of rational social and international
peace and liberty, — these things com
pensate for much imperfection in the
result of his philosophy. His demand
that the evolutionary concepts shall be
unified, remains a permanently inspir
ing logical idea which will bear much
fruit in future. His service as a
teacher of his age will never be for
gotten. His limitations have their
own classic finish of outline. His
place in the history of English think
ing is significant and secure.

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HERBERT SPENCER'S
EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

HERBERT SPENCER'S

EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

AMONGST the numerous reflec-
f"\ tions to which a reading of
Spencer's "Autobiography"
gives rise, some memory of his educa
tional theories finds a very natural
place. I propose, accordingly, in this
paper, to reconsider some of Spencer's
views regarding education, and to do
so in the new light in which the " Auto
biography " enables us to see both the
man and his work. A general sketch
of Spencer's " Theory of Education," a
consideration of how this theory was
related to his own personal character
121

HERBERT SPENCER

and early training, and a resulting esti
mate of the value of the theory will
constitute the task to which this paper
is devoted.1

1 The following essay was prepared, independently of
the essay upon Spencer's " Philosophy of Evolution," as
a paper to be read before an educational conference. As
a supplement to the more extended consideration of his
general theories, it finds its place in the present book.

122

DURING the years between 1850
and 1860, Spencer, then be
tween thirty and forty years
of age, was a frequent contributor to
various periodicals. In 1850 he had
published his first work, the " Social
Statics," a treatise on the application
of certain ethical ideas to the man
agement of society, and in particu
lar to the theory of government.
This first work had, as its consequence,
a somewhat rapid development of
Spencer's own ideas in the direction
of his subsequent " System of Syn
thetic Philosophy." The development
in question led through the prepara
tion of the first form of his work on
"The Principles of Psychology," — a
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HERBERT SPENCER

book in which he gave the first ex
pression to his view of the doctrine
of evolution. This volume was pub
lished in 1855. The Spencerian con
ception of evolution now quickly grew
more definite, and was applied to more
various classes of facts. The article
on "Progress, its Law and Cause,"
was prepared in the early months of

1857, and constituted what Spencer
himself calls " the initial instalment
of the ' Synthetic Philosophy.' " The
plan, however, of writing and issuing
his connected system did not assume
the form of a written prospectus until

1858. In 1860 the definitive pro
gramme of the system, much revised,
was issued, and the undertaking of
writing the "First Principles" began
May 7, 1860.

Otherwise, however, during the dec
ade in question, Spencer had been
busied with such essay-writing as his
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HERBERT SPENCER

varied relations with a number of
journals and reviews, and the trend
of his own interests, had determined.
His mode of life, during those years,
was that of a bachelor literary man
who lived, now in London, now in va
rious country places, as circumstances
and his mood determined. He had
deliberately abandoned, long since, his
first profession of engineering for such
opportunities as editorial and essay-
work might give him to develop his
mind, to enjoy his own intellectual
freedom, and to influence the thinking
of his time. Social problems, the study
of human nature, and the questions of
general science principally concerned
him. It was to this period of the 50' s
that the most notable of the early
papers which still appear in his col
lected essays belong.

Amongst other topics, however, the
problems of education attracted his
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HERBERT SPENCER

attention. The four papers which are
now to be found in his volume on
"Education" belong to the decade
which is here in question. In 1854 ap
peared a paper on " The Art of Educa
tion," now the second of the essays of
the volume on education. In 1859 the
essay on " Physical Education " was
published in the " British Quarterly, "
and the two other papers which make
up the volume on education are prod
ucts of the same period. In 1860 this
volume was published in America, the
" North British Review " not permit
ting the republication in England of
two of the papers. The work has re
mained, so far as I am aware, sub
stantially unchanged.

The book on education thus belongs
to the formative period of Spencer's
philosophical career. In its relation
to his life it appears as a sort of
summary review of the lessons which
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HERBERT SPENCER

his childhood training and his youth
ful studies had taught him; while, in
turn, its formulation furnished to his
thought one of the numerous illustra
tions of that general conception of
evolution which he was soon to at
tempt to apply to all regions of the
organic and inorganic realms. Spen
cer's theory of education is thus not
a mere corollary of his general sys
tematic doctrine of evolution, since
his educational ideas occurred to him
during the time when this systematic
doctrine was still in process of assum
ing form in his mind. On the other
hand, his theory of education is indeed
intimately related, in his mind, to the
general evolutionary doctrine ; because
the same motives which led him to his
system led him also to define how he
viewed the task of the teacher.

These four essays on education are,

or at least until recently were, amongst
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the best known general guides which
our more progressive American school
teachers and writers on the art of
teaching have been disposed to consult
and to discuss. Still, I suppose that
I cannot assume their contents to be
perfectly fresh in the mind of every
one of my readers. I must therefore
sketch, in the rudest outline, their
contents.

The first paper, on " What Knowl
edge is of Most Worth! " contains
Spencer's famous, and, in its way, un
doubtedly classic statement of the case
in favor of giving to the study of nat
ural science the most prominent place
in a rational curriculum. " Before
there can be a rational curriculum,"
says Spencer, "we must settle which
things it most concerns us to know.
... To this end, a measure of value
is the first requisite." But now :
" Everyone in contending for the
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worth of any particular order of in
formation, does so by showing its bear
ing upon some part of life," by showing
that a given sort of learning "bene
ficially influences action, — saves from
evil or secures good, — conduces to hap
piness." "How to live," continues
Spencer, "that is the essential ques
tion for us. Not how to live in the
mere material sense only, but in the
widest sense. To prepare us for com
plete living is the function which
education has to discharge; and the
only rational mode of judging of any
educational course is to judge in what
degree it discharges such function."

Now to live means to carry out cer
tain kinds of activity, which may be
classified under five heads. These are :
first, "those activities which directly
minister to self-preservation ; second,
those activities which, by securing the
necessaries of life, indirectly minister
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to self-preservation ; third, those activi
ties which have for their end the rear
ing and discipline of offspring ; fourth,
those activities which are involved in
the maintenance of proper social and
political relations; fifth, those miscel
laneous activities which make up the
leisure part of life, devoted to the grati
fication of the tastes and of the feel
ings." The classes thus stated are
named, says Spencer, in the order
which is also that of their " true sub
ordination." For unless one first
preserves himself from moment to
moment, he can do nothing else ; and
of the types of activity which follow
in the list, it is plain that some meas
ure of success in each type is a conditio
sine qua non of any success in any of
the succeeding types.

Some degree of training in each of
these types of activity belongs to the
purpose of any rational system of edu-
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cation. There should be, however, the
most careful training in the most essen
tial and important types; and the de
gree of training in each type of activity
should be proportioned to the value
of that type in the series of successive
types. That is, whatever training you
have time to give a man in the types
of activity, which are to occupy his
leisure time, you should, in any case,
give him more careful training still in
the activities which concern him as a
citizen or as a member of society, and
more careful training still in his duties
as a parent; and you should be most
of all careful that he learns what is
essential to self-preservation. More
over, knowledge relating to the activi
ties of any type is more important in
proportion as it has intrinsic and uni
versally valid connections, rather than
transient or conventional connections,
with that sort of activity. And knowl-
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edge has also a value not only in itself,
but in so far as it constitutes a means
of discipline of the mind, and is thus
useful as a mental exercise.

Having set forth these preliminary
considerations, Spencer proceeds to
show what sort of knowledge best
furthers each of the five kinds of
activities. Our activities which tend
to self-preservation need to be sup
ported by a knowledge of the laws
and conditions of health. "A course
of Physiology" such "as is needful
for the comprehension of its general
truths, and their bearings on daily
conduct, is an all-essential part of a
rational education." The indirectly
self-preservative activities of the sec
ond type, namely those which involve
earning our livelihood, are in general
to be furthered by a knowledge of
physics, of chemistry, and of biology,
and, in case of the more exact arts and
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activities, by a knowledge of mathe
matics. Industrial success also de
pends upon some sort of knowledge
of the laws which obtain in the life
of society. The activities which have
to do with the care and the training of
children are not to be wisely carried
out unless aided by a knowledge of the
laws of child life. Therefore, "Some
acquaintance with the first principles
of physiology and the elementary
truths of psychology is indispensable,"
says Spencer, " for the right bringing
up of children."

As for the fourth class of human
activities, those of the citizen, a knowl
edge not of the trivial gossip of what
is usually called history, but of the
laws of society, is essential for the
proper and successful performance of
the work of citizenship. And thus, to
sum up, as regards all those human
activities which are directly or in-
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directly devoted to self-preservation,
or which are concerned with the duties
of the parent or of the citizen, the
knowledge that is most needed is the
knowledge of some branch or branches
of science. Physiology, psychology,
social science, and in their respective
places, mathematics, physics, chem
istry, — these comprise, then, the
branches of knowledge which are of
the most worth.

It might be supposed that the fifth
type of human activities, those con
cerned with the leisure portion of life,
would emphasize the relative impor
tance of other types of knowledge be
sides those which belong to the pursuit
of the various natural and social sci
ences. But Spencer now proceeds to
the decidedly famous assertions which
here follow. To the question, "What
knowledge is of most use . . . what
knowledge best fits for this remaining
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HERBERT SPENCER

sphere of activity ? " viz., for the activ
ities that have to do with cultivation,
with art, and with refinement, Spencer
answers: "Unexpected as the assertion
may be, it is nevertheless true, that the
highest art of every kind is based upon
Science — that without Science there
can be neither perfect production nor
full appreciation." Painting, sculp
ture, music, poetry, Spencer hereupon
insists, are arts whose productive ar
tists depend, for their success, upon a
knowledge of natural facts and natural
laws, be this knowledge one of optics
or of the laws of equilibrium, of the
psychology of human passion, or of
the psychology of speech. Whoever is
justly to appreciate art must possess,
in some form, the same sort of knowl
edge. Usually, artists and observers
alike depend upon hastily acquired
and ill generalized knowledge of the
types in question. It would be better,
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he insists, if their knowledge were
more accurate and better generalized.
This could occur only in case both
artist and admirer of art are duly
possessed of the necessary scientific
knowledge. Thus in case of the fifth
type of activities, as well as in case of
the other and more necessary types,
the knowledge that is of most worth
is the knowledge of the sciences.

Similar considerations result if one
asks whether scientific knowledge,
rather than other types of knowl
edge, possesses merely conventional
and transient value, or whether, on the
contrary, it possesses permanent and
intrinsic value. Custom, Spencer in
sists, may indeed make the writing of
Latin poetry a temporarily dignified
sign of cultivation; but nature it is
which renders all scientific knowledge
permanently important. Accident may
set everybody busy trying to know
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HERBERT SPENCER

about some popular hero, e. g., Napo
leon. But permanently important truth
about the laws of society possesses no
accidental, but rather an intrinsic sig
nificance, which 110 popular whim can
generate or destroy. Moreover, the
disciplinary value of scientific knowl
edge is greater than that of other
kinds of knowledge. Nothing trains
the mind better than the study of
nature.

In sum, then, from every point of
view science, in the sense of the

things, is that sort of knowledge which
is of most worth. Hence, the current
system of classical training is not only
defective, thinks Spencer, but it is, in
its principle, fundamentally and hope
lessly at fault. It not only lays the
sole stress upon the least important of
the five types of human activities, —
those which belong to the leisure por-
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HERBERT SPENCER

tion of life, — but it emphasizes meth
ods of work which are not suited to
the best development even of this type
of activities. The Greek scholar is led
to judge of poetry without understand
ing psychology, to estimate architec
ture without knowing anything about
statics, and to pass as a judge of sculp
ture, although he is ignorant of anat
omy. As he has not learned to observe
nature, he cannot wisely enjoy art.

Moreover, the current study of his
tory, thinks Spencer, lays stress on
whatever is trivial in the affairs of
the past, and does not fit the student
to comprehend sociology. Hence the
humanities, as they are studied, are not
useful to aid the student even in that
comprehension of human nature which
one needs in training children, or in
performing one's duties as a citizen.
An entire reform of the educational
system in the interests of science — a
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HERBERT SPENCER

reform from top to bottom — is con
sequently, in Spencer's opinion, a
requirement of the time, and a re
quirement which, as he also holds, the
time, so far, wholly misunderstands.

Such is the famous first amongst
Spencer's four papers on education,
— a paper which will long remain a
classic expression of its author's in
sight, power, and limitations. From
the complex problems of education in
our own day we may well look back
with envy upon one to whose view the
problem " What knowledge is of most
worth! " could appear so enviably solu
ble, so beautifully uncomplicated. You
fail to understand, perhaps even to pro
duce, poetry. Well, then; study psy
chology and phonetics. They may not
overcome your difficulties ; but therein
lies the sort of knowledge that you
most need in order to cultivate your
poetical appreciation. You wish to
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become a sculptor. Well, you are to
use marble. Your success will there
fore doubtless be furthered if you
make prominent not only the study
of anatomy, but also the general theory
of the strength of materials, and the
principles of dynamics, or perhaps of
chemistry. Tennyson writes in the
"Two Voices ":-

" 'T is life of which our veins are scant,
More life and fuller that we want."

One of Tennyson's two voices ought
to have been thoughtful enough to
remark that, if this really is what we
want, we had better study Foster's
"Physiology," and also take a labora
tory course in the science!

Now, seriously, in our own day, when
the high worth of scientific study is in
deed so cordially recognized, what one
can still object to a view of this type is
not, of course, that it is merely false,
but that it marvellously, and with the
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relative falsity of one-sidedness simpli-
flies the problem both of life and of
education. In these days, there is no
longer danger, at least in our country,
that the true and deep significance of
scientific studies shall fail to be recog
nized. Meanwhile, it is indeed un
questionably a merit of this very essay
of Spencer to have stated, in the middle
decade of the last century, and in Eng
land, so simply, so cogently, so popu
larly, a plea for the study of the natural
sciences. But our wonder, as we read
to-day, is how Spencer can possibly
have interpreted the educational prob
lem in such simple terms. It is not
that he has given so much value to the
special sciences, but that he is so un
able to observe the values that belong
to other types of human learning. Just
here it is that his "Autobiography"
will help us to understand the naivete
with which he defended this position,
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and why the educational world seemed
to him so simply definable.

The second of the essays of the vol
ume upon education is that upon " In
tellectual Education." It deals with
the central problems of the method of
teaching elementary science to young
minds. Its maxims have now entered
so completely into the life of many
teachers of elementary science, that
here a very brief exposition will suffice.
The pupil, as Spencer teaches us, is to
be made, from the outset, so far as
possible, an investigator of nature. He
is not only to come into contact with
natural facts at first hand, but he is to
be taught to generalize his own prin
ciples through an inductive study of
the problems which the facts suggest.
To as small an extent as possible is he
to learn by rote, to as small a degree as
possible is he to be guided by author
ity, or led to lean upon the crutch of
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his teacher's explanations. He must,
above all, learn the art of observation.
Moreover, he must be so guided that
the acquisition of knowledge shall be
pleasurable rather than painful. The
lessons of the field and of the play
ground shall be, especially in early
years, a very important part of the cur
riculum. The order of learning must
correspond, moreover, with the order
of the evolution of the mind. In our
teaching we must proceed from the
simple to the complex, just as the mind
itself in its natural evolution grows
from simplicity to complexity. We
must proceed also from the concrete to
the abstract, from the singular and the
particular to general principles. " The
education of the child must accord
both in mode and arrangement with
the education of mankind considered
historically." We must therefore also
proceed from the empirical to the
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rational. " Every study should have a
purely experimental introduction, and
only after an ample fund of observa
tions has been accumulated, should
reasoning begin." The whole process
should be, as far as possible, one of
" self-development " on the part of the
child. Children " should be told as
little as possible, and induced to dis
cover as much as possible." The final
test whereby we judge " any plan of
culture ' ' should meanwhile be the
question, " Does it create a pleasurable
excitement in the pupils!' "When
in doubt," says Spencer, "whether a
particular mode or arrangement is or
is not more in harmony with the fore
going principles than some other, we
may safely abide by this criterion."
For, as to the value of a study for a
given child, " a child's intellectual in
stincts are more trustworthy than our

reasonings."

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Spencer proceeds to apply these prin
ciples to the doctrine of the education
of the senses, to the early stages of
nature-study, and then to the more
complex processes whereby the child
passes, as he grows, to a comprehen
sion of the wider connections and the
more general principles of the natural
sciences. Our philosopher discusses
the use of drawing as a means of train
ing a child's powers of observation, and
considers the suitable course whereby
the child can be led to a knowledge of
the laws of perspective, and to the
point where he can grasp geometrical
principles. The " self -instruction " thus
initiated and guided is to become the
basis for a voluntary and self -directed
educational course which shall continue
into mature years and throughout life.

The third of the essays on educa
tion, and one of the most frequently
criticised, contains the famous doctrine
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of the " discipline of consequences " as
the true basis of any sound moral educa
tion. Instead of external and arbitrary
commands, counsels, and penalties, the
child should be trained and coerced
into good conduct only by contact with
nature and with his fellows, and by his
own needs, physical, social, intellectual,
and emotional. To be sure, counsel
may unobtrusively aid in the process.
But after due warning from his parent
or teacher has preceded, and has been
disregarded, then the pain of the burn
which a careless playing with fire on
the child's part involves will teach him
not only to dread the fire, but to be
willingly more considerate henceforth
of the warnings which he hears from
the same source. When he himself is
unkind, the natural penalty is the tem
porary loss of that friendship which his
guardians, if they are wise, will long
since have established with him. Coer-
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cion, like intellectual training, must
thus be self-developed. That is, the
child must learn to hold himself in
check, by getting every proper oppor
tunity to learn why such checks are in
accordance with his own physical in
terests, and are inevitable accompani
ments of a happy social life.

The fourth and final essay is con
cerned with the problems of physical
nurture and training, and here interests
us less, despite what I suppose to be
its considerable historical importance
as a means whereby general attention
was attracted to the importance of this
aspect of school life.

14T

II

OUR hasty review of the essays
on education has already shown
us that these papers are espe
cially characterized by a certain notable
directness, by their simplicity, and by
their absence of care for the harder
complications of educational theory.
Just as Spencer's doctrine regarding
" What knowledge is of most worth I "
knows no scruples regarding those as
pects of life and of conduct concerning
which no special natural science gives
the learner sufficiently definite counsel,
precisely so his admirable statement
of the method of elementary nature-
study shows no sign of recognizing cer
tain other problems of method which
are not to be solved merely by arous-
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ing a pleasurable excitement in the
child, nor by teaching him to observe
phenomena, nor by encouraging him
to make his own generalizations from
particular natural facts. And precisely
so, whoever really knows men, is aware
that the "discipline of consequences,"
important though it unquestionably is,
is by no means the whole story of
the means whereby we war with the
moral ills of human nature. The whole
Spencerian account is that of a man
innocent, so to speak, of some of the
greatest of human issues, a man to
whom certain beautifully clear and
simple ideas suffice as the expression
of the whole business of living. Yet,
on the other hand, you see as you
read, that this is indeed no man of
the closet, but a man acquainted, and
well acquainted, with just those as
pects of his physical and of his social

world which he chances to find of
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interest. He is, withal, a genuinely
humane man, who loves human liberty,
respects the rights and the interests of
children, and desires to have no man
externally constrained by any require
ments save those of nature and of the
general welfare of other men. The
narrowness of Spencer's outlook into
the field of education is as obvious as
is the wholesomeness of his attitude
towards all the educational problems
that he actually comprehends. And
so the reader is led to ask, How came
Spencer by these his insights and his
limitations ? He was himself no prac
tical teacher. How came he to know
so well the curiosity of the actually
inquiring child who loves nature ?
How came he to comprehend so well
the business of the teacher of elemen
tary natural science to children ? On
the other hand, he was by deliberate
choice a philosopher. How then came
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he to ignore so wide a range of vital
human interests as he did ignore 1

To all such questions the " Auto
biography ' ' now furnishes a most inter
esting answer. For it shows us that
Spencer's account of the ideals and of
the problems of the teacher is little
other than a direct confession of his
own experience, not indeed as a teacher
of other people's children, but as a
pupil of his father. His own father
was his model of what the elementary
teacher of science, in dealing with chil
dren, ought to be. His own youthful
experience — the experience of a mor
ally very sound and admirable boy —
had given him an acquaintance with
the discipline of consequences as the
basis, in his own case, for a very whole
some moral education. His own later
nervous invalidism, which developed
during the 50' s, and which was ac
companied by a good deal of over-
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HERBERT SPENCER

concern about his bodily sensations,
had rendered him peculiarly interested
in the problems of physical training.
Hence his essay on that topic. His
range of scientific studies, his own
earlier practical use of these studies
in connection with engineering work,
and his later disposition to general
ize ideas derived from these scientific
studies so as to make them applicable
to the whole field of philosophical in
quiry, — these are the motives which
express themselves in his personal
estimate of the relative importance of
scientific knowledge. The book on
education is thus indeed no arbitrary
invention of a doctrinaire, who devises
programmes for other people. It is in
itself a sort of generalized autobiog
raphy. It has therefore all the naivete
of the man who says, " Thus I grew;
and so ought any man to grow."

" Thus I am ; and, except for my in-
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HERBERT SPENCER

validism, so would any man be happy
to be, if only the world would stop
interfering with him." The calm as
surance with which Spencer thus views
all other men's life-problems in terms
of his own personal experience is
characteristic. To be sure, he mean
while lays great stress upon personal
independence, upon individual rights.
He does not wish to force his ways
upon anybody. He would let every
man grow, so far as possible, in that
man's own way. But he is convinced,
upon the basis of his own experience,
that there is substantially only one
way to grow, — viz., by observing
natural objects in childhood, by learn
ing to make one's own generalizations,
and by profiting from the moral dis
cipline of consequences. In brief,
Spencer is indeed an individualist ; but
he recognizes, after all, only one essen
tially important sort of individual, —
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HERBERT SPENCER

viz., an individual of the intellectual
and moral temperament of Herbert
Spencer. That he actually meets, in
the England of his time, with so few
other individuals who seem now to be
of this type, — this fact appears to him
to be due simply to the vicious national
system of education. Let any boy
alone in the right way, but encourage
him to observe nature, and he will
become, in his own measure, an essen
tially Spencerian sort of person. Force
upon him the classics, teach him gram
mar, coerce him as the English boys
in the antiquated public schools are
coerced, and then, indeed, he may turn
into a professor of Greek, or a theolo
gian, or a Tory, or some other objec
tionable type of slave to tradition. As
a fact, human nature is one, and
healthy training can conform to but
one type. It seems hardly excessive
to interpret Spencer in this way.
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HERBERT SPENCER

How easily Spencer emphasizes his
own personal point of view as he de
fines what it is objectively important
for a man to know is suggested, in the
course of his first essay, by a very char
acteristic remark. In this essay, in
one passage, he has occasion to illus
trate, by peculiarly obvious and im
pressive instances, how the truths of
science, unlike the vain traditions of
classical or of historical education,
have a worth which is not conven
tional or transient, but intrinsic and
permanent. He therefore needs, in
order to show this, to name a few
very vital and certain scientific princi
ples. He actually names the follow
ing: "Such facts," he says, "as that
sensations of numbness and tingling
commonly precede paralysis, that the
resistance of water to a body moving
through it varies as the square of the
velocity, that chlorine is a disinfectant,
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HERBERT SPENCER

— these, and the truths of science in
general, are of intrinsic value; they
will bear on human conduct ten thou
sand years hence as they do now."
This selection of vitally important sci
entific truths is, I say, characteristic.
For the first momentous truth of sci
ence which Spencer here mentions —
the assertion about numbness and tin
gling as warning symptoms of coming
paralysis — hardly seems to-day, I think,
to have the significance which he at
tributed to it. It is apparently more
momentous to observe that a very
large class of neurasthenic sufferers
pretty persistently complain of numb
ness here or there in their bodies, and
of various other false sensations, and
that just these people are consequently
often disposed to worry, very obsti
nately, over the idea that they are
about to be paralyzed. This symptom,
not of any actually impending apoplec-
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HERBERT SPENCER

tic attack, but of nervous hypochon
dria, is one of the commonest of the
complaints of patients of the type to
which Spencer himself, from 1855 on,
belonged. The bearing of the prin
ciple on human conduct is, therefore,
probably this: Since some such pa
tients live, like Spencer, to be eighty
years old, and since very many of them
indeed never get any nearer to para
lytic seizures than thus to complain,
most of them need not worry over
their numbness. For their apoplexy,
if ever, and whenever, it chances to
come upon them, is very likely, in its
mean-spirited way, to give them no pre
monitory sensations whatever to men
tion in their essays as illustrations of
momentous scientific truths.

The insistence here in question is
indeed but a trifling matter. Yet of
itself it suggests what the " Autobiog
raphy " shows us in detail, namely,
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HERBERT SPENCER

that Spencer's essays on education are
themselves, in a very marked sense,
the outcome of autobiographical reflec
tions. To say this is of course not for
a moment to set the whole educational
theory in question upon a level with
the very pretty fragment of uncon
scious nervous confession just men
tioned. A man like Spencer is to be
judged, of course, not by his chance
words, but by his larger views. And
as a fact, if his head-symptoms made
him, from early middle life on, some
what over-anxious about himself, his
own early training had been, in its
own way, both physically and mentally
a model of a normal and a wholesome
process of development. One can only
envy him the chance to be himself
which this training had involved. One
can also only admire this entire process
as indeed, when rightly estimated, a
model for the training of other men.
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But the true lesson of the model is
that other men, of types far removed
from Spencer's, can only be trained as
well as he was trained, in case methods
are individualized for their needs, as
Spencer's father so happily individual
ized the method of training for the
young Spencer's needs. It does not
follow that what knowledge was of
most worth for Herbert Spencer must
needs be of most worth for every other
child. It does not follow that just that
form of the discipline of consequences
which proved so effective in the moral
training of a calm, obstinate, consider
ate, watchful, outward-looking, cheer
fully inquiring, dispassionate, kindly,
but essentially cool nature, such as
was that of the young Spencer, will
serve for every other variety of human
creature. Spencer, as a boy, was a
very normal human being of his own
type. And if all children were of his
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HERBERT SPENCER

type, the problem of education would
indeed be simplified; yet the result
would hardly be such as would add to
the gayety of nations, to the poetry of
life, or even to the practical effective
ness of the race. For my own part, as
I read the " Autobiography," I come
to admire and to enjoy Spencer as
never before. I would not have him
a different personality for the sake of
any man's theories or methods. He
was of his own kind a most wonderful
example. But I should be sorry if all
men were Spencers.

Herbert Spencer was born in 1820, —
the first child, and the only child of the
family to reach maturity. His parents
were a highly intellectual father and
a very gentle, kindly, and unaggressive
mother. The father was a teacher,
carrying on a school and also taking
private pupils, until ill health led to his
abandoning this occupation. He was,
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HERBERT SPENCER

except for some defects of temper, a
very noble and high-minded man of
sensitive constitution, and of great and
conscientious industry. In youth he
was vigorous and active, but later he
was for years a sufferer from nervous
irritability, with vexations of various
sorts, which interfered with his effec
tiveness, but not nearly so much with
his intellectual interests. He was in
dependent in spirit and practice, pious,
and of positive religious convictions,
but a nonconformist in the fullest
sense, — nominally for years a Wes-
leyan, but then seceding from that
body, and thereafter making little of
outward religious forms. In religions,
as in other matters, as Spencer tells us,
" my father advocated self-help and in
dependent exploration, rather than pas
sive recipience." Spencer the father
always remained, however, a believer

in what he took to be genuine Chris-
11 161

tianity, and regretted his son's later
abandonment of supernaturalism. The
father had some ability as an inventor,
and what his son describes as " artistic
perception joined with skill of hand."

The father took seriously, from the
first, his office as his son's teacher;
yet equally, from the first, he chose a
policy involving a minimum of inter
ference and a maximum of freedom
for the boy. Of Herbert Spencer him
self the first recorded incident of any
intellectual importance is this, which
his father long afterwards wrote down
as a reminiscence: "One day, when
a very little child, I noticed," says the
father, "as he was sitting quietly by
the fire-side, a sudden titter. On say
ing, ' Herbert, what are you laughing
at? ' he said, * I was thinking how it
would have been if there had been
nothing besides myself.' ' This, I may

say, seems to have been Spencer's only
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HERBERT SPENCER

excursion into Idealism. When Her
bert Spencer was seven years old, his
parents moved to a house in the out
skirts of Derby, where the boy's child
hood was passed. His training began
with very little school drill, with com
paratively little active control on the
part of the father, and with much
wandering on the boy's part in garden,
fields, and woods, together with a good
deal of fishing. Before long the boy's
interest in natural objects took intel
lectual form in a collecting interest
in entomology — an interest which the
father encouraged. Moths, butterflies,
dragonflies, beetles, were extensively
studied; their larvae were collected;
drawings were made of them. " Initi
ated thus naturally," says Spencer, " I
practised drawing all through boyhood
to a greater or less extent. . . . My
father disapproved wholly of drawing
from copies." Sketches of outdoor
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HERBERT SPENCER

objects of various sorts followed. And
the boy was led over to making models
of various kinds. Meanwhile, like other
children, Herbert was, as he says,
" extremely prone to castle-building, —
a habit which continued throughout
youth and into mature life. ... In
early days the habit was such, that on
going to bed, it was a source of satis
faction to me to think I should be able
to lie for a length of time and dwell on
the fancies which at the time occupied
me." The resulting mental habits ran
to the delightful extremes common
enough in children who are brought
up much alone. Novel-reading erelong
followed, and was secretly pursued after
the boy had been sent to bed, although
such reading was of course against the
rule. This generally outdoor life, and
this absence of forced labor, tended,
as Spencer feels sure, to establish his
health. He became strong, and was a
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HERBERT SPENCER

good runner. With his playmates, as
far as he had them, he was peaceable.
But from an early age he had a marked
" disregard of authority," and the con
sequence, as he says, was " chronic
disobedience." Not that his conduct
tended to active viciousness, but that
he quietly went on in his own set way.
His father blamed this sort of behavior,
but did not vigorously interfere to pre
vent it, being himself too sincere a
nonconformist to be fond of coercion.
Along with this trait went, however,
an unwillingness on Herbert's part to
domineer over other boys, a love of
letting other people have their liberty,
and an aversion to any form of cruelty
to animals, except, to be sure, in so
far as the beloved fishing involved giv
ing pain to the fish. Even this form of
causing pain later seemed to Spencer,
in his youth, intolerable, and he then
gave up fishing for years, resuming it
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HERBERT SPENCER

only as a refuge in his later invalidism.
During boyhood Herbert was sent by
his father to more than one school ; but
the father remained his chief teacher.
Early the father showed the boy phys
ical experiments, and got him to help
in performing them, taught him, by
actual experiments, the rudiments of
chemistry and, above all, encouraged
him in independent thinking. Espe
cially prominent was the father's habit
of asking the boy, " What is the cause! ' :
of one or another natural phenomenon.
The boy was encouraged to puzzle out
such matters for himself. " On one
occasion," says Spencer, " my father
put to me some question concerning
the cause of an occurrence named ; and
when, after a pause, I gave him my ex
planation, his reply was, " Yes, people
who knew nothing about it would think
that clever; but it is not true." Here
upon, however, so far as Spencer re-
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HERBERT SPENCER

ports the incident, there seems to be
no memory of any further explanation
offered. The question was left open.

The immediate result of this boy
hood training is summed up by Spen
cer himself in a remarkable passage of
the "Autobiography" (I, 100):-

" Here let me sum up the results of my educa
tion thus far — that is, to the age of thirteen.

"I knew nothing worth mentioning of Latin or
Greek : my acquaintance with Latin being limited
to ability to repeat very imperfectly the declensions
and a part only of the conjugations (for I never got
all through them) ; and my acquaintance with Greek
being such only as was acquired in the course of
word for word translation, under my uncle Wil
liam's guidance, of the first chapters of the Greek
Testament. Moreover I was wholly uninstructed
in English — using the name in a technical sense :
not a word of English grammar had ever been
learned by me, not a lesson in composition. I had
merely the ordinary knowledge of arithmetic ; and
beyond that no knowledge of mathematics. Of
English history nothing ; of ancient history a little ;
of ancient literature in translation nothing ; of biog
raphy nothing. Concerning things around, how
ever, and their properties, I knew a good deal
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HERBERT SPENCER

more than is known by most boys. My conceptions
of physical principles and processes had consider
able clearness ; and I had a fair acquaintance with
sundry special phenomena in physics and chemistry.
I had also acquired, both by personal observation
and by reading, some knowledge of animal life,
and especially of insect life ; but no knowledge of
botany, either popular or systematic. By miscel
laneous reading a little mechanical, medical, ana
tomical, and physiological information had been
gained ; as also a good deal of information about
various parts of the world and their inhabitants.
Such were the acquisitions which formed a set-off
against the ignorance of those things commonly
learned by boys.

"Something remains to be named, however. I
refer to the benefit derived from an unusual mental
discipline. My father's method, as already inti
mated, was that of self-help carried out in all direc
tions. Beyond such self-help as I have already
exemplified, there was always a prompting to intel
lectual self-help. A constant question with him
was, — ' I wonder what is the cause of so-and-so,'
or again, putting it directly to me, — ' can you tell
the cause of this?' Always the tendency in himself,
and the tendency strengthened in me, was to regard
everything as naturally caused ; and I doubt not
that while the notion of causation was thus ren
dered much more definite in me than in most of my

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HERBERT SPENCER

age, there was established a habit of seeking for
causes, as well as a tacit belief in the universality
of causation. Along with this there went absence
of all suggestion of the miraculous. I do not
remember my father ever referring to anything as
explicable by supernatural agency. I presume from
other evidence that he must at that time have still
accepted the current belief in miracles ; but I never
perceived any trace of it in his conversation. Cer
tainly, his remarks about the surrounding world
gave no sign of any other thought than that of
uniform natural law.

' ' Let me add that there was on his part no
appeal to authority as a reason for accepting a
belief. That same independence of judgment, which
he had himself, he tended, alike intentionally and
unintentionally, to foster in others ; and in me he
did it very effectually, whether with purpose or not.
Doubtless it existed innately ; but his discipline
strengthened it."

The next stage of Spencer's training
was begun when he was sent to take
lessons with his uncle at Hinton, near
Bath. Of the resulting rebellion of the
boy at his uncle's somewhat stricter
discipline, and of his flight from his

uncle's house, and return home, under
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HERBERT SPENCER

conditions which involved great tem
porary hardship, the "Autobiography "
tells in its Chapter III. He walked
decidedly over one hundred miles in
three days, alone, with no sleep and
almost nothing to eat, and appeared at
home in a state of great exhaustion, to
the alarm of his parents. One sees
how, as a result of this incident, Spen
cer did indeed experience the disci
pline of consequences in a case where
his own quiet obstinacy brought him
for the first time into a larger con
flict with authority. Plainly, being the
boy he was, the incident of his flight,
of his long walk home, and his ex
haustion by the way and subsequent
temporary prostration, taught him an
important lesson, without notably al
tering his attitude towards authority.
Later he returned to Hinton, and re
mained there with much more docility,

but still with the same characteristic
1TO

HERBERT SPENCER

independence of mind and interest,
until he was sixteen years old. In
1837, at the age of seventeen, Spencer
entered the office of the resident engi
neer of the London and Birmingham
Railway to learn, by actual work on
the road, the calling of a civil engineer.
Herewith his boyhood training ends, and
his transition to the work of life begins.
The principal motives which deter
mined Spencer's early education are
now before us. We see the truth of
what he himself remarks in the "Auto
biography," viz., that his father's plan
for his early mental guidance was the
basis upon which rested Spencer's later
views as to educational method, while
the concrete and extremely practical
training in science to which he was
subjected in his later boyhood, and
during his apprenticeship as engineer,
gave him his view as to what knowl
edge is of most worth.
Ill

Ill

AjRE AD Y, in the foregoing sketch,
I have indicated the direction
in which lie the criticisms that
I should venture to suggest regarding
Spencer's educational theories.

First and most notable is the criti
cism of the facts themselves. Spencer's
educational theory is a generalization
from the experience of a single indi
vidual. This generalization is sup
ported by arguments whose genuine
value, as true indications of how the
education of men in general should be
guided, I do not question, so long as
you recognize that these arguments
refer to certain aspects only of human
life, and to certain problems only of
human training. These aspects and
172

problems are indeed important. That
the sciences must occupy an important
part, henceforth, in the curriculum, we
all now recognize. Spencer's plea for
individualism in education, his respect
for the rights and the interests of the
individual child, is also deeply and
permanently significant. But the true
lesson of Spencer's experience is, as I
have said, wider than he himself rec
ognizes. The principle which he il
lustrates is the principle that each
individual deserves to have his own
chance for sound training. But for
that very reason people who are not
of Spencer's type may need a training
widely different from that of Spencer.

Secondly, however, as to the educa
tional principles which I should be
disposed to oppose to Spencer's prin
ciples, they are these. The purpose of
training a man is, on the whole this:

We want to fit him to take a definite
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HERBERT SPENCER

place, as an individual, in human so
ciety. Now an individual man needs,
not only a generalized knowledge of
the laws of the physical world and of
human nature, but an interest in and
a power to co-operate with individual
human beings. The limitation of any
form of scientific training is that, how
ever carefully it may be founded upon
the observation of facts, it terminates
in a knowledge of general principles.
Now general principles, as such, refer
to the laws of things, and not to indi
vidual truths. But in real life we
have to deal with the individual man,
with this friend or neighbor, with the
personal duty, with the appreciation
of this task, this human affection, this
work of art, this relation to humanity
or to Grod. Hence the place in human
training which is occupied by whatever
helps us, not merely to understand

psychology, but to love our neighbor;
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HERBERT SPENCER

not merely to comprehend sociological
principles, but to be loyal to this com
munity; not merely to be abstract
critics of art but to enjoy this poem,
or this song, to admire this hero, to
estimate this personal character, to
bear this personal burden, to endure
this affliction, to be patient under this
trial. Now one great purpose of the
humanities in education is to open our
eyes to truths which cannot be ex
pressed in abstract form, but which
can only be appreciated through a di
rect enjoyment of human life, as it gets
portrayed in history, in literature, and
in art.

Where, as in Spencer's own case,
just such training was, in large part,
from the very nature of the man him
self, unassimilable, the result is one
which our philosopher's " Autobiog
raphy ' ' now emphasizes with classic

perfection. A lover of humanity in
175

the abstract, Spencer was peculiarly
destitute of any large power to appre
ciate individuals. He was, of course,
not wholly destitute of this power.
How could a man of his calibre have
failed altogether of this common privi
lege of mankind? But he certainly
was not what he would have been had
his nature been fitted for a higher
education in the appreciation of indi
viduality, and had he then received
such education. In his " Autobiogra
phy " a few of his friends appear to
have been to him very genuine individ
uals ; and to them he was nobly loyal.
So it was with his father, and, to a less
degree, with John Stuart Mill, with
Huxley, with George Eliot. But Spen
cer's hopeless inability to understand
his critics, to enter into profitable con
troversy, to read an author with whose
principles he felt any decided disagree
ment, to learn from his fellows in any
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HERBERT SPENCER

adequate measure, — all this was the re
sult of the temperament which limited
him to studies such as dealt mainly in
generalities. This was why history,
which deals so largely with the indi
vidual, was in such a vast range of its
human interest a sealed book to him.
It would be sad indeed if all other
men could be reduced through any
system of training to the same degree
of poverty in their appreciation of
individuality.

Thirdly, to repeat an objection which
has often been made, Spencer, in his
essay upon * l What knowledge is most
worth," obviously speaks as if he failed
to distinguish between the technical
worth which an applied science has for
any of the tasks of humanity, and the
personal worth which the same science
may have for the student who can
never get the expertness needed in
order to apply his knowledge. Chem-
12 177

HERBERT SPENCER

istry is needed in a thousand arts ; but
how far will the boy who performs ele
mentary chemical experiments thereby
get on the way towards becoming a
chemical technologist? The value
which the elementary study of chem
istry has for a particular boy may be
very great indeed; but you cannot
measure that value by laying stress
upon the importance of the applica
tions of chemistry in the arts. For
the successfully studious boy himself
the value of this science, so far as his
early work goes, will lie rather in the
orderly habits of observation, of think
ing, of conduct, and of self-criticism
which he acquires, and also, very
largely, in the intrinsic interest and
beauty of the knowledge of natural
law which he gets as he works. But
just such power and life he might also
gain from quite different studies, were
they equally well pursued. You there-
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HERBERT SPENCER

fore cannot judge the value of his men
tal processes by insisting that, without
chemistry, the arts of modern life
would cease. Yet when Spencer tells
us that our life depends upon natural
conditions, and that therefore we must
study nature, in order to win control
of the arts of self-preservation, he
surely seems to confound the possible
technological value of an applied sci
ence with the value of the rudiments
of that science to the learner. The
tyro acquires elementary learning for
the sake of what it can rightly mean
to him. Only the expert wisely ap
plies his knowledge; and the expert,
in the modern world, comes to be
farther and farther removed from
the tyro. The result is well seen in
the case of physiological knowledge.
Practical instruction in hygiene, with
enough elementary physiology to make

that instruction living, is indeed highly
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HERBERT SPENCER

valuable in its place. But how limited
that place at best is, in view of the
problems which the care of health, not
only in one's own case, but in the case
of one's family and dependents, soon
brings to the mature man! When
these harder problems arise, our rudi
mentary physiology may prove merely
mischievous, unless we know when to
consult experts. Spencer himself, in
view of his obstinate self-confidence,
would probably have done better as
an invalid if he had had less of the
physiological knowledge which he mis
used in diagnosing, and probably too
in treating, his malady. The lesson is
that the young learner, whatever he is
to gain from science, must certainly
not be encouraged to regard his first
crude generalizations as in themselves
constituting the acquisition of a mas
tery over the arts of living. If he does

so regard them, he may acquire Spen-
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HERBERT SPENCER

cer's own incapacity for taking advice
when he might wisely do so. One
good result of elementary study, if it is
rightly guided, ought to be a high regard
for expert opinion, — a regard which
Spencer always lacked. As his work in
his generation depended upon lacking
such regard, we ourselves may rejoice,
in his case, in the result ; but may we
escape the fate of having all children
brought up in like fashion!

The worth of elementary science for
the learner cannot be measured, then,
in terms of the worth of applied science
for the arts; and in so far as Spencer
reasons as if this were possible, his
argument is idle. To say this is in no
wise to belittle the true value of ele
mentary training in natural science, —
a value which is nowadays, for the most
part, quite otherwise estimated.

Finally, as to the moral training
through the " discipline of conse-
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HERBERT SPENCER

quences," Spencer himself, in his fre
quent reflections in later years, upon
the unteachableness of most men re
garding very notable personal and social
ills and evil tendencies, has furnished
sufficient ground for making us see the
limitations of that method. There are
certain things which we learn best
through reflecting upon the conse
quences of our own deeds. The privi
lege of making our own blunders, and
of learning thereby, is, in respect of
such matters, very precious. But there
are other respects in which we learn
best through imitation, obedience, and
whatever else does not leave us to our
selves, but wisely informs us with tend
encies to action which we could never
have invented if left to ourselves. In
general, loyalty — the essence of orderly
social morality — is in most of us, in
case we attain to loyalty at all, the re
sult rather of an early " heteronomy "
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HERBERT SPENCER

of the will, which can only later reach
" autonomy." The young Spencer's
cool obstinacy and quiet good nature
are not the heritage of every child.
And yet there are some leaders of men
who, with other moral training than
his, have attained, after all, to much
loftier ideals than he ever knew. He
avoided anarchism of all sorts. But
the " discipline of consequences " never
made him exactly a hero, or a saint.

Let us honor him for what he was.
But let us be glad that he is not the
trainer of our children.

183

REMINISCENCES

OF

HERBERT SPENCER

REMINISCENCES

OF

HERBERT SPENCER

CARLYLE, the most graphic of
literary portrait painters, has
somewhere observed that he
never could thoroughly understand the
character of a man till he had seen some
kind of a portrait of him. Herbert
Spencer was no recluse. For many
years he might daily have been noticed
walking in the parks and on the streets
of the west end of London. He was
a familiar figure in certain sections of
London society. And he might not
unfrequently have been observed at
theatres, in concert halls, or (much more

rarely) at public gatherings.

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He was above the average height, —
about five feet nine or ten, — and had not
the upright, unbending, and yet elastic
carriage of a Gladstone, but rather an
easy, good-natured swing, which an
swered well to his character, though
that too was unyielding in matters of
principle. The head was large, remind
ing one of Gladstone, Carlyle, and Owen,
and the forehead was broad, but not as
high as one would expect in a great
philosopher. His hair was black, but
his light-blue eyes entitled him to be
called a blonde. The nose was aqui
line and strong; the upper lip (in
herited from his mother) was long and
gave his face an expression at once of
honesty and also of a certain common-
placeness that overlay his originality.
The passionless thin lips told of a total
absence of sensuality, and the light
eyes betrayed a lack of emotional

depth. Neither the chin nor the lower

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jaw revealed exceptional strength; and,
in fact, though he showed no want of
firmness in life, and never yielded in
any struggle, he possessed none of the
dubious qualities so often associated
with an abnormal development of the
jaw and the muscles of the neck. The
tinge of color on the cheek bones
spoke of an incorruptness of nature;
and be it noted in passing that he paled
when he was angry, as formidable men
are said to do.

In all probability he inherited (so far
as he did inherit) his originality from
his father, who was the author of an
esteemed work on " Inventional Greom-
etry," and also of anew system of short
hand. W. Gr. Spencer was remarkable
for his inventiveness in small contriv
ances; indeed, according to his son, he
wholly devoted himself to such things
in his later years and let larger matters

go by the board. The son inherited his

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father's inventiveness (though he would
not admit it), and he abounded in me
chanical devices ; but he never sacrificed
principles to details. From the same
source the author of " Social Statics "
derived the stuff that goes to make a
rebel in a good sense, which was the
basis of his character. The father is
described in the Rev. T. Mozley's
"Reminiscences" in a passage that
was shown to a colonial Premier. " A
nonconformist! ' he exclaimed when
he had read it. Spencer was a noncon
formist in the widest sense to the end
of his days. He was against govern
ment of all sorts, because he was him
self fully self-governed and habitually
self-sufficing. He long acted on the
principles expounded in his " Manners
and Fashions." He at first went out
to dinner in a frock coat, which he at
length discarded in favor of a swallow
tail, but he always refused to wear a
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white necktie; those who had invited
him, he said, must take him as he chose
to come. When the Czar Alexander II.
visited London, he expressed to Lord
Derby, then Foreign Minister, a wish
to meet the most distinguished savants.
Lady Derby accordingly invited, among
others, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall.
Each dealt with the invitation in a
characteristic manner. Huxley con
sidered that, as a representative of
scientific societies, he might properly
appear in the regulation costume ; Tyn
dall went in ordinary evening dress,
and was said to have looked extremely
uncomfortable; while Spencer at first
declined to go on the pretext that he
had no court dress, and when Lady
Derby hoped that he would come
dressed as he liked, he decided not to
go at all.

From his father the young Herbert

Spencer received virtually the whole
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of his education. An American cor
respondent elicited from W. Gr. Spencer
some particulars of his method. It was
the method afterwards recommended
by the author of " Education : Intel
lectual, Moral, and Physical." His son
was taught from objects, not from
books. His first lessons were on the
laws and properties of external things.
He was not allowed to open a book on
any subject that was to be studied until
he had been taught its principles by
oral and ocular demonstration. He
had then no errors to unlearn, and he
was made to see things as they were, not
through a mist of words. It is further
stated that young Spencer passed sev
eral years under the roof of his uncle,
who was an Anglican incumbent near
Bath. What he learned from the Kev.
Thomas Spencer it is difficult to dis
cover. He had the " little Latin and

less Greek " of the dramatist, and
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he always derided classical learning.
His introductory chapter on education
makes light of it, and his essay on style
has an unflattering comparison (pur
posely barbed, as he afterwards ad
mitted) between the ghost stories that
fill a servant girl's head and the an
cient myths that fill a modern classic's.
Where he picked up his own highly
Latinized style it is not easy to make
out. The uncle was no pedant, but a
man of liberal sympathies and phil
anthropic activities. Spencer's edu
cation, in so far as it was received
from others, must have stopped short
at the time when he left his father's
instruction.

His objective and mathematical edu
cation largely determined his adoption
of the profession of a civil engineer.
He had a pronounced contempt for
one-sided capacities, and he thought

that an able man should be capable of
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doing anything. He would himself
have been distinguished in almost any
pursuit. He had an inexhaustible fac
ulty of developing, a priori and a
posteriori, inductive and deductive ar
guments in support of any imaginable
proposition, and as a nisi prius advocate
he would have been unapproachable.
He might have been a professional in
ventor and anticipated Edison. His
water colors showed a promising ar
tistic gift, and having a bass voice of
good timbre, he sang in part-music.
From the last-named accomplishment
it may be inferred that his striking essay
on " The Origin and Function of Music"
was no accident, nor was it (as Emer
son ungenerously and untruly said of
all his writings) the work of a " stock-
writer who could write equally well on
all subjects."
A local circumstance strengthened

his determination for engineering and
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gave it a specific direction. Derby was
then, as now, the headquarters of the
Midland Railway, and it was rather to
the mechanical branch of his profession
that he applied himself. A pamphlet
on the great gauge controversy brought
him into notice. But he was one of
Nature's engineers. His constructive
faculties were of the first order. He
surveyed a science as a geologist sur
veys the lie of a country. He laid out
a subject like a surveyor. His argu
ments have the effect of a mathematical
demonstration, and yet they build up a
structure imposing by its symmetry.
He once had occasion to draw up a
model of the analytical treatment of a
department of Sociology. He chose
the Ecclesiastical, and in a few minutes
he tabulated all the ramifications of the
subject in a manner that even he could
hardly have improved upon. Mill says
that Bentham's disciples learned from
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the master the art of breaking up a
subject into its constituent parts.
Spencer's assistants learned from him
the more difficult art of building up
the disintegrated elements into an
organic whole.

His CALL

But he had a still more imperious
vocation. His father's and his uncle's
examples (had examples been needed)
pointed him to authorship, and while
he was still an engineer he published
several papers in the " Civil Engineer's
Journal." A series on " The Proper
Sphere of Government " more plainly
revealed his true calling and attracted
the notice of James Wilson. Men
lately living remembered the hatter of
Hawick, who resembled Socrates in
being found more frequently in the
market-place than in his shop. Pass
ing through Hawick in 1867, Disraeli
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described him to the delighted Hawick-
ites as "a very remarkable man."
He was sufficiently remarkable to get
himself elected a member of Parlia
ment, where his financial capacity was
so conspicuous that he was appointed
a member of the Council of the Gov
ernor-General of India. In 1848 he
was proprietor and editor of the " Econ
omist," and on that now eminent weekly
Spencer served as sub-editor for fully
three years, from 1848 to 1852. He
had already decided to abandon his
over-crowded profession and (as he
mentioned to myself) was on the point
of emigrating to the land of promise
in New Zealand, where, like Alfred
Domett, Browning's "Waring," who
emigrated in those years, he might
have risen to reputation as a Philo-
Maori Premier. The small new ap
pointment kept him in England and
not only settled his future, but (may
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HERBERT SPENCER

we not say?) determined the future of
English philosophy. While he was
sub-editor of the " Economist" he
composed "Social Statics." "Social
Statics ' ' led to his being invited to
contribute to the new "Westminster
Review," for eight or ten years one of
the most brilliant periodicals ever pub
lished. James Wilson, then the editor
of this review, did not make Spencer
a philosopher, but he made his career
as a philosopher practicable.

His HEALTH

Spencer had one qualification that
has sometimes been thought indispen
sable for a literary career or, at least, an
inevitable accompaniment of it. Like
Carlyle, Comte, Mill, and Darwin, he
was a life-long valetudinarian. He was
the only surviving child of his parents,
and he was long so delicate that they
had little hope of rearing him. Con-
198

stitutional feebleness may have predis
posed him to " break down," as he
always phrased it, in his thirty-sixth
year. Yet every day hundreds who
have no constitutional infirmity break
down as he did. The collapse may be
due to a variety of causes — overwork
or overstrain, excitement, disappoint
ment or grief, a poor diet, or disease
(such as pleurisy) in combination with
any of these. Spencer always asserted
that his own breakdown was not due
to overwork. His account of the mat
ter was that, living alone in lodgings
in 1855, being a member of no club,
and having few acquaintances, he grew
to be so preoccupied with the task he
had then in hand as to be unable to
shake it off. It rose with him in the
morning; it walked about with him;
worst of all, it went to bed with him.
If we remember that that task was the
building up of a new science of psy-
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chology, not on the old foundations,
but drawn almost wholly from his own
entrails, so to speak, we shall realize
somewhat of its engrossing nature and
be less surprised at the collapse.

It was an ordinary case, without com
plications. Some obscure portion of
the brain — probably the higher cen
tres, concerned in ratiocination and re
flection — had been overstrained and
had given way, with a resulting incur
able lesion. At no time, he said, had
he any pains, and I think he escaped
most of the more disagreeable symp
toms of cerebral congestion; and
though he suffered all along from
chronic insomnia, there were none of
the " horrors of the night " that often
accompany nervous derangement. His
pulse was either slow and strong, or else
quick and feeble. " Doctors," he said,
" knew nothing about it " ; but he still

consulted them at times and took their
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prescriptions, though from both theory
and personal experience he must have
known more of his own case than all
of them together. At one time he reg
ularly took tonics, and he was always
experimenting with new ones; but I
imagine that, with most others in like
cases, he found it was best to use medi
cines only in emergencies.

After his first breakdown, he was dis
abled for a whole year and a half. None
but those who have gone through a
similar experience can imagine the
misery of the situation. All day he
wandered about aimlessly in town or
country, unable to write, unable even
to read. He did not then know — he
can hardly have dreamed, and none of
his friends imagined — what a career
lay before him, but he must have been
conscious of possessing powers that
would carry him to eminence. And

now it might be that his future was
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completely wrecked in the wreck of
his health. Neither then nor after
wards did he receive much sympathy.
He " looked well," was physically vig
orous, and bore no visible traces of the
inward ruin. His acquaintances spoke
of his disablement with a smile. But
he never complained and patiently
awaited the self -restoration brought so
often by Nature, which is by no means
always " careless of the single life."
His faith was rewarded. Growing tired
of his idleness, he resumed work, and
to his joy and wonder discovered, as
George Sand found with her eyes, and
others have found with their heads,
that his strength had insensibly come
back. But it was not unimpaired.
The liability to break down remained,
and the least over-exertion was followed
by a relapse. He then threw up all
his engagements, would not even look

at a book or read a letter, and hurried
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away to his native Derby, to Brighton,
or Tunbridge Wells. There he wan
dered about, feeling thoroughly bored,
doing nothing, talking gladly with any
one who offered, and even seeking
chance conversation as both physically
beneficial and as a means of escaping
the obsession of his own thoughts.

In a few weeks he came back to
London, if not thoroughly recruited, at
least fit to resume work. There was
then no delay and no hitch. Without
visible effort, but rather with the eager
ness of a courser that had been reined
in, he took up the thread of his thought
at the point where he had dropped it,
and the keenest eye would not have
discerned any breach of continuity. It
was like the weaving of a web of which
the warp was his own mental tissue,
while the weft was the conscious reflec
tion that tossed the shuttle from side

to side. When did he prepare! It
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HERBERT SPENCER

might perhaps have been said of him,
as Sir Walter Scott said of himself,
that in one sense he was never occupied
with the subject in hand except when
he was actually engaged on it, and in
another that it was never out of his
mind. His practice (as may be judged
from an advice he gave to another) was
to break into a little run whenever he
fell into a train of thought; but this
must have been a precaution for his
ailing times. When met with on the
street, of an afternoon, he was obviously
reflecting. Still more visibly self-ab
sorbed was he when seen in Kensington
Gardens (which were adjacent both to
his place of residence and to his work
room) between nine and ten in the
forenoon. Evidently the stream of
thought was flowing smoothly, for he
had always a cheerful greeting for a
passing acquaintance. He complied
with Emerson's test of the geniality
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HERBERT SPENCER

of genius. Very different was Carlyle
when casually encountered in Picca
dilly, the face lighted up and the eyes
blazed, the now rickety body staggering
under the impetus of the inward vision,
like a crazy ship driven on by a too
powerful engine. When one thinks of
these men and of others as great, or
only less great — of Gladstone and Lowe
and Salisbury, of George Eliot and
Lewes, of Fitzjames Stephen, James
Spedding, and Henry Irving — one is
tempted to believe that no small part
of the world's best thought and feeling
is conceived or generated on the noisy
streets of the world's metropolis.

Whence did Spencer derive the mate
rials for the vast structure which he
reared! To no question is the answer
more unsatisfactory. Even those who
were in daily intercourse with him for
many years would answer with hesi
tation. It may be confidently asserted
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that he at no time received systematic
instruction in any branch of science.
At one time, indeed, he engaged so
ardently in the study of microscopy
that he impaired his eyesight, and be
fore he was fifty he wore spectacles
while he read ; but he must have pur
sued this study under his own direction.
It may be doubted if he ever attended
a course of scientific lectures. What
is more surprising, it may be doubted
if he ever read a book on science from
end to end. An Edinburgh philosophi
cal writer of rare acumen and rarer
humor was ridiculed because he wrote
books on philosophy without reading
Hamilton's Lectures. Spencer com
posed his "Social Statics," which is a
book on ethics as well as on politics,
having read no other ethical treatise
than an old and now forgotten work by
one Jonathan Dymond, which he was

never tired of citing, not quoting, for
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HERBERT SPENCER

even this book he probably had not
read through. He produced an original
treatise on Psychology, and though he
had "glanced" (it was his favorite
word) at Reid and Hume, he had pre
pared himself by reading only what he
called "that subtle book," Hansel's
"Prolegomena Logics." Excepting
Carpenter's "Principles of Comparative
Physiology," he had possibly not care
fully perused a single book on Biology
when he wrote his " Principles of Bi
ology "; perhaps it will be considered
an error and a misfortune that he hardly
read even the "Origin of Species."
He composed his " Principles of Soci
ology" without reading Comte or Tylor,
and no one was more astonished than
he when Tylor claimed priority in orig
inating the ghost theory on which
the Spencerian science of religion is
founded; "Primitive Culture" had
stood on his shelves for years, but had
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HERBERT SPENCER

stood unopened. He wrote his final
treatise on ethics without reading Mill,
Kant, Whewell, or any of the recog
nized authorities on morals, excepting
portions of Sidgwick. Where, then,
did he find his ideas, and above all,
whence did he procure his facts? He
picked up most of his facts. Spending
a good part of every afternoon at the
AthenaBum Club, he ran through most
of the periodicals, reading little in the
way of disquisition, but lynx-eyed for
every fact that was grist to his mill.
Half an hour thus passed was lucrative,
so rapid was his assimilation, so orderly
his mental arrangement of his acquisi
tions, and so tenacious his memory for
facts that he could connect with an
idea; for isolated details or for mere
words his memory was weak. At the
same institution he habitually met with
all the leading savants, many of whom
were his intimates. From these, by a
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HERBERT SPENCER

happy mixture of suggestion and ques
tioning, lie extracted all that they knew.
At home he pillaged the two or three
critical and scientific periodicals he took
in. His assistants, especially Dr. Dun
can and Dr. Scheppig, supplied him
with a mass of sociological materials.
From time to time he distributed his
cuttings and excerpts in the various
drawers of his bureau, which were
labelled, respectively, ASTEOGENY, G-E-
OGENY (at a time when he must still
have hoped to overtake the treatment
of these sciences), BIOLOGY, PSYCHOL
OGY, SOCIOLOGY, and ETHICS. Ethics,
as a lady remarked who saw the bureau,
was at the bottom, but the ready retort
was that ethics was the foundation of
them all. Lastly, he went everywhere
with his eyes open. A walk, an excur
sion, a ride in a bus or a train, a resi
dence in the country, supplied him with

fresh facts. One of his most substan-
14 209

HERBERT SPENCER

tial essays — that on " Specialized Ad
ministration ' ' — sets out with a wallet
of paradoxes gathered out of doors.
He was no dreamer ; his curiosity was
ever awake, and he was continually
directing the attention of his companion
to some notable phenomenon, obvious
when pointed out, but until then seen
by his eyes alone.

His IDEAS

A prepared mind assimilates ideas
more easily than facts, and most of
Spencer's ideas, like his facts, were
picked up. He was at no time a great
reader, and he could never have won
Plato's encomium on Aristotle. As
suredly he did not belong to the class
of over-read men, such as Cudworth
and Huet, Bishop of Avranches, Sir
William Hamilton and Principal Lee,
Grervinus and Theodore Parker —

" Daniel Lamberts of learning," as he
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HERBERT SPENCER

would himself have said, in whom an in
cubus of erudition had at length smoth
ered the thinking faculty. Rather, he
belonged to the more select class of
under-read philosophers, like Descartes
and Hobbes, Spinoza and Kant, William
Greorge Ward and Thomas Hill Green,
in whom an imperious power of origi
nation makes the absorption of foreign
ideas as impracticable as it is superflu
ous. A long list of obligations to his
contemporaries — far longer than he
has avowed or would have acknowl
edged — can be sheeted home to Spen
cer, but they were acquired by the
smallest possible expenditure of per
sonal labor. He owes something to
Emerson, and he had perhaps read a
dozen pages of the Sage of Concord.
He owes much more to Carlyle, but
he had never read fifty pages of the
Prophet of Chelsea. The sight of

Dickens' s library astonished and almost
211

HERBERT SPENCER

pained Lewes; it consisted mainly of
presentation copies. Spencer's library
was not quite as poverty-stricken, but
it was wofully deficient in the class of
books that might have been expected to
be found in it. There was not a single
work on philosophy other than those
sent to him ; if I rightly remember, no
book of Hobbes, Locke, Reid, Hume,
Kant, or Hamilton. There were even
few books in science; there were no
histories or biographies, and in the way
of pure (or impure) literature there
was only a much prized copy of " Tris
tram Shandy." It might be supposed
that he borrowed books from circulat
ing libraries, but it is doubtful if he
was ever connected with a circulating
library till, late in the 60' s, he joined
the London Library for the sake of his
assistants. And even then, he never,
or hardly ever, took out a book. In

fact, he was not a reader at all, in the
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HERBERT SPENCER

ordinary sense of the word, but only a
gleaner. He did not " tear the entrails
out of books," like Sir William Hamil
ton; he left them, for the most part,
severely alone.

His method of composition has been
elsewhere described (by the present
writer), but it is too characteristic to
be wholly admitted. His earlier books
and essays were all written with his
own hand. When he entered on the
composition of his system in 1860, he
employed an amanuensis. He had but
one object in so doing — to econo
mize his strength. The beneficent
typograph (boon of all invalids and per
haps first used in England by a chronic
invalid — Professor George Darwin)
had not been invented, and he found
the drudgery of quill-driving disabling.
The earlier part of " First Principles "
was written one autumn by the shores

of a Highland loch. He rowed in a
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HERBERT SPENCER

boat for a quarter of an hour to make
the blood flow freely through the brain,
and for an equal space he dictated
highly finished matter that came as
freely. In London, when he was cere
bral] y shaken but physically robust,
he preferred to go to a racquet court.
One of his most abstruse efforts of ra
tiocination — the admirable exposition
of Transfigured Realism in his " Prin
ciples of Psychology" — was dictated
in the intervals of a game at racquet in
a court at Pentonville in the north of
London. He remarked at the time
that readers would be surprised to see
an illustrative woodcut in the heart of
a metaphysical discussion ; they would
have been still more surprised had they
known of the non-philosophical sur
roundings amid which that high argu
ment was elaborated.

Mr. Spencer worked through the

morning in his rooms at 2 Leinster
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HERBERT SPENCER

Place, Bayswater. Arriving punctually
at ten, he proceeded to despatch his
correspondence. Tyndall once ex
pressed his astonishment at constantly
receiving letters from perfect strangers,
requesting to be informed on all man
ner of scientific topics; such letters
must at least have been more agreeable
to read than the missives that periodi
cally consigned the infidel (as others
consigned Carlyle and Renan) to per
dition. Spencer was too remote from
the average intelligence to excite the
wrath of the damnation-monger, and
he was too high above the struggling
crowd to be made a father-confessor by
souls in pain, as were Kingsley, Car
lyle, and Newman. But he was con
tinually applied to by men occupying
public positions who were perplexed
by social problems. Australians sought
his counsel on the employment of black

labor in the canefields, and, uncompro-
215

mising Radical as he long was, he was
so far influenced by evolutionist prin
ciples as to believe that Australia, like
Europe, might have to pass through
a period of mitigated slavery. New
Zealanders desired his advice on the
conflict between individualism and so
cialism, of which these islands are now
the chief theatre. Letters of a personal
character were rare. One such stands
out in memory. The undergraduates
of the oldest Scottish University had
nominated him as their Lord Rector —
a post once adorned by Mill, Stanley,
and Froude. It is understood that
he would have been elected; but he
dreaded the excitement of delivering
the customary address. The Senate
of the University then took advantage
of the occasion to offer him, in com
pany with Professor Jowett, the hon
orary degree of Doctor of Laws. The

remarkable letter in which he refused
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HERBERT SPENCER

to accept the distinction is worthy of
being placed beside the more indignant
letter that Samuet Johnson addressed
to Lord Chesterfield. Had such a
degree, he wrote, been offered to
him when he was young and strug
gling for recognition, it would have
been welcomed. Now that he had
won a secure position absolutely with
out aid from others (for even his
friends had been shy of reviewing his
books), he no longer needed it, and he
was indifferent to an honor that he
would not use. The Senatus Acade-
micus might have replied that even its
own older members — philosophically
trained men like the head of the Uni
versity, Principal Tulloch, and its most
brilliant professor, James Frederick
Ferrier — had been repelled by the
novelty of his ideas and his forbidding
terminology. A new generation had
to grow up that would appreciate him
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HERBERT SPENCER

at his true value, and crown him with
very different laurels. Degrees, di
plomas, candidatures, and presidencies
came afterwards knocking at his door,
and he put them all aside without os
tentation and without a pang.

His correspondence cleared out of
the way, fully two and a half hours
remained for the morning's work. He
used to say that he found reading and
reflecting about equally hard. To an
observer, reading seemed to be much
the harder. As he read, a look of tense
and almost painful concentration came
over his face, while the act of dictation
betrayed scarcely an effort. Smoking
half of a cigar to promote the mental
flow (the cigar carefully cut in two to
prevent excess), his voice never rising
or falling, the eye faintly lit up with
the thinker's far-away look, but never
burning with the prophet's flame, with
out changes of physiognomy or a single
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gesture, and (unlike Goethe, Cousin,
or Helos) always seated, he passion-
lessly unrolled the panorama of his
thought. There was no battle. Noth
ing recalled Paul Janet's description
of Victor Cousin, " seeking with pain
and labor, stumbling and groping, vex
ing himself, and finding nothing."
Never was he baffled. Never had he
to cast his work aside, as even Mill had
to do, till a process of " unconscious
cerebration ' ' removed the obstacles.
He never reconstructed his sentences,
or began again, or patched, or threw
out, or greatly added. The tragi-com-
edy of the thinker's life, when he digs
in his brain for thoughts and finds it
empty, was unknown to him. His
mind was always full to overflowing.
At one time he had himself read to,
and the writer selected the vivid his
tory of " The Anglo-Saxons in Eng
land," written by Tennyson's "latter
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HERBERT SPENCER

day Luther," John Mitchell Kemble.
But he could not endure more than a
paragraph or at the most two. The
amount of thought the reading excited
in him demanded utterance, and he
proceeded to dictate matter which he
considered valuable enough to be pre
served. In one of the few passages in
his writings that reveal an intuitive
insight into human nature he speaks
of individuals whose thoughts come in
single file, and who have in conse
quence to retire to the quiet bypaths
of life. His own thoughts came in
platoons, and the difficulty was to
marshal them. His style of thinking,
like his way of life, has been described
as mechanical. If so, it was a very
deep sort of mechanism. To one who
through many a forenoon saw limb
after limb and organ after organ of
some scientific structure appear and

take shape, till all at length grew to-
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gether into a natural whole, it rather
seemed to be an organic process that
had Nature's own sanction.

At the end of a month he subjected
the manuscript to a careful revision,
generally condensing, putting a word
for a phrase and an apter word or phrase
for one less apt, but otherwise altering
little. He then carried the MS. to the
printing office, having too little confi
dence in a government institution to
intrust it to the post-office. He re
vised it in the first proof, in the revise,
and in the final revise ; and in all three
it was read by an assistant, whose sug
gestions, not often important, were re
spectfully heeded. So much care did
he lavish on all his work.

Needless to say, his conversation was
interesting as few men's is. A distin
guished American writer was travel
ling with him in the English Midlands

early in the 70' s, but left him abruptly,
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for a melancholy reason that was after
wards discovered. Spencer imagined,
in his modesty, that it was because
his American acquaintance was disap
pointed with the intercourse he had
with the philosopher. Disappointment
in some cases was quite possible. His
thought had certain limitations and his
manner certain hardnesses that repelled
minds of a particular order, as I think
they at one time repelled Mr. Glad
stone; but when these peculiarities
were allowed for (as Gladstone came
to do), or, it may be, sympathized with,
disappointment was out of the question.
His wealth of scientific knowledge and
his inexhaustible abundance of new
ideas made his conversation a source of
rare instruction and unfailing delight.
In point of mere style it was often
enough decousue. He would plunge
into a long sentence without knowing

how it was to end, pile up qualifications

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and parentheses, diverge on this side
and that, leap over all obstacles, and
finally arrive at his goal, not that he
had finished what he had to say, but
politeness bade him stop. He was at
his best with single interlocutors, espe
cially with one of his peers, like Lewes
or Bain. His superiority was then un
mistakable. He had none of Huxley's
wit or ready sword play, though his
capacity for devising all manner of
arguments in support of any position
he might take up made him a formid
able debater. But what struck one
most on such occasions was his sagacity.
His thought was usually deeper and
always wider than that of his inter
locutor. Considerations the other had
overlooked or facts unknown to him
were brought to light and seemed to
change the whole complexion of the
matter in hand. With younger men

he was often eager and impetuous;
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with his cequales he was calm, grave, and
measured. Had he been fortunate
enough to find a judicious Boswell, he
might figure in the eyes of posterity as
advantageously as the Sage of Weimar
in Eckermann's hypnotic restorations,1
or the Prophet of Chelsea in Sir Charles
Gavan Duffy's more literal transcripts,
or the old Scottish rabbi who held with
Professor Knight those high metaphysi
cal and theological " Colloquia Peripa-
tetica " on the sands at Elie.

Like Henry VIII, Spencer knew how
to say and do the right thing with men,
but he was not equally felicitous with
women. An accomplished lady, once
well known in literature, used to say
that always, when she was talking with
him, she " felt as if she were being
rubbed the wrong way." Perhaps it

1 See in the "Conversations -with Goethe" Ecker
mann's curious account of the trance-like mood into which
he wrought himself before he could recall Goethe's talk.
Did it affect the accuracy of the report?
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is true that in his earlier and middle
years, when he had taken up with un
popular opinions and was tabooed in
literature in company with other scien
tific heretics of the day, he expected to
meet with opposition, especially from
women, and armed himself in advance.
A man does not nurse such a humor
without being the worse for it. But
it doubtless passed away as opposition
grew rarer or more respectful, and as
his views were received with greater
sympathy. Still, it remains a fact that,
like Fitz james Stephen, who had " never
known a woman that was worth talk
ing to for five minutes together," he
was too purely masculine to do full
justice to the other sex. That he knew
G-eorge Eliot and admired her was due
probably to the fact that he never re
garded the great novelist as a normal
woman.

Sainte-Beuve gives it as the key to La
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Rochefoucauld that the cynical moralist
was never able to put his whole per
sonality into anything that he did in
practical life. No such remark could
be made of Spencer. Whether it was
work or play, he was totus in illo. He
cultivated all sorts of indoor and out-
of-door games as safety-valves. Into
every one of them he threw himself as
if he had no other pursuit. He played
billiards through many a long dull even
ing when he could not read and dared
not reflect. When lawn tennis came
in, he took to it eagerly. He was always
ready to join in or get up a picnic, be
lieving that the loss of time was amply
compensated by the gain in energy.
In a riverside excursion, boating on
the Thames or wandering through the
grounds at Rosherville or Hampton
Court, he was delightful, never appar
ently thinking of his work or himself,

yet full of ideas and abounding in ob-

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servations, and with many a hearty
laugh at each light joke. In the same
lovely scenes I have noticed a distin
guished savant (personally among the
best of men, but with this single failing)
forge slightly ahead of his companion,
his cloak thrown over his shoulder, his
head bent, and a look of mock-profound
reflection on his face, as if he were dis
entangling some knotty problem, while
his companion hardly knew whether
to laugh or be angry. Not such was
Spencer.

He was, of course, a personage in
London society, and a hostess was
sometimes more enthusiastic than dis
criminating. One lady addressed him
as "Dear Mr. SPENCER HERBERT";
another exchanged her personality with
his, and absent-mindedly subscribed
her letter of invitation: "Yours truly,
HERBERT SPENCER." He on his side
was often playful in reply. He did not
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HERBERT SPENCER

go to "at homes" or receptions, the
hours of such gatherings being usually
later than he cared to stay out of bed ;
but about three evenings a week he
dined out, generally refusing invitations
for two successive evenings.

Much of his leisure time was passed
at the AthenaBum Club. Every after
noon he walked across Kensington
Grardens, Hyde Park, and the Green
Park to the palatial building in Pall
Mall. There he met with most of his
friends and sought the distraction of
conversation. There he played billiards
almost daily, and there, when he had
no engagement, he dined. There the
principal of a Scottish university,
whose biography has been attractively
written by Mrs. Oliphant, saw "the
great philosopher S. gloating over his
dinner with unphilosophic eyes, and
afterwards moving about among his

friends with the air of a man of the

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world acquired too late in life." That
is deadly, and it is not even half
true. The jolly principal, who " moved
about " so very like a god in the little
university town where he dwelt, looked
vastly more as if he thoroughly enjoyed
a good dinner than ever the dyspeptic
philosopher can have done. "An
Epicurean in theory, and a Stoic in
practice " was the account given, by
no means of Principal Tulloch, but of
Herbert Spencer, by one of Tulloch's
colleagues and friends, — the late ami
able Professor Spencer Baynes.

Though he liked active sports, he
took kindly to the recreation par ex
cellence of the meditative man, and
almost every autumn he went to Perth
shire or Argyleshire for a month's
trout or salmon fishing. He disap
proved of field sports on the score of
their cruelty, but defended angling be
cause fishes are cold-blooded animals.
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It is difficult to perceive where the
difference lies. No one who has seen
a fish dying in the bottom of a boat,
watched its convulsive struggles, and
observed the bright hues fade, can
doubt that its death-agony is only less
sore (if it is less sore) than that of
the mammal. That a difference of de
gree at length makes a difference of
kind is, it is true, the very soul of
evolution.

Such was one of the greatest thinkers
of the nineteenth century as he lived
and moved among his fellows — his
bodily appearance and ways of life, his
work and his play, his individual effort
and his social intercourse. " How
rare " and (in spite of half a century's
impaired health) " how fortunate ! "
may we not say with John Burroughs
of Emerson? And surely we may
add: "How serene, how inspiring!"

Once and again the Transcendentalist
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descended into the arena to do battle
for a cause — for the expatriated In
dians and the unemancipated negroes ;
but no cloud shadowed his unalterable
calm. Not once or twice, but many
times, the Evolutionist had to contend
for convictions that were dear to him
as life ; but a single occasion excepted,
his composure was ever unruffled, and
never once did he forget the amenities
that high thought imposes on its vo
taries. He was never trivial. He once
rebuked a gossiping questioner by a
quotation from Shakspere about "the
meanness of common knowledge." He
seldom expressed a disparaging opin
ion about either individuals or books.
Hostile judgments had to be wrung out
of him. " What did he think of a cele
brated scholar whom he met with in
Egypt? " He at last confessed that he
was repelled by the other's " sceptical

habit of mind." It was the Agnostic
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that was the believer and the Christian
minister who was the unbeliever. He
practised, as he constantly preached,
the social duty of forgiveness. He had
broken with James Martineau because
the Unitarian had been guilty of mis
representing his views in an article
published in the old " National Re
view" ("misrepresentation" was one
of his key words), but in after years he
made up this quarrel with his really
gentle critic; and, excepting that he
used to condemn Martineau' s hetero-
clite style, there was never a word of
disparagement. He was at all times
(with rare exceptions) heartily appre
ciative of the work and thought of
others. The Congregationalists were
pleased with his impartial eulogy of a
philosophical work written by a pro
fessor in one of their colleges, and the
author of a treatise on ethics wrote

(not to him) that his few laudatory
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lines had " strengthened the bond be
twixt disciple and master." In his
later years especially he took pleasure
in practising that gospel of encourage
ment preached by an English Noncon
formist and in distributing words of
praise to younger writers. His verdict
was eagerly sought and much prized.
He was animated by nothing less than
a passion of justice, and in all busi
ness transactions he was punctual
and exact. But he was also generous
and charitable and gave almost beyond
his means where giving was needed.
Where aid of a practical kind was re
quired, he was unweariable; and a
hundred anecdotes of his helpfulness
could be related. " They tell me thou
art great, Walter," said the uncle of
Scott to the Wizard of the North;
"but thou wast always good." Her
bert Spencer had little of Scott's

native sweetness of disposition, but
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he went far towards realizing the
"pious wish" expressed in Schiller's
distich by uniting, in no common
measure, essential goodness with true
greatness.

234

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