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 (-
 
 HEEBEET SPENCEE
 
 CopyngJit, 190^ 
 By Fox, Duffield & Company 
 
 Published September, 1904 
 
 Printed in America 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PdCSS, CAMBRIOGE, U.S.*.
 
 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 
 ah'eady 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 
 9
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 I 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 
 10
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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
 
 SOME ASPECTS OF THE HISTOEY OF THE 
 CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 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 
 12
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 tivo 
 processes which together, according to 
 him, comprise the *' whole range of 
 13
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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, 
 15
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 16
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 2 17
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 thiiiij^s 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 o^vn 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 
 18
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 19
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 witliout the persistent use of certain 
 leading ideas which the Greeks abeady 
 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 
 20
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 21
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 
 22
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 23
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 24
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 " 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- 
 25
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Grreek 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- 
 26
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 ivithin 
 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 
 27
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 28
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 (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 Grreek 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 
 30
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Grreek 
 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 
 31
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 32
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Gralileo 
 to Newton. Modern science, in this 
 its first great movement, did not con- 
 tribute to an interest in the growth of 
 
 8 sa
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 34
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 35
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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, ivhenever these motives are 
 predoininant in special science and in 
 philosophy, evolution is likely to be 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 
 36
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. Sufdce 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 
 37
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 38
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 afi&liated types of re- 
 39
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Galileo: "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 
 40
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Grreek 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- 
 41
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 42
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 43
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 44
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. 
 
 45
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 46
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 Grreat 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 Germany. 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 
 47
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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." 
 
 48
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 4 49
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 50
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Greorge 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 62
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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.^ 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 
 
 ^ The theory here in question is the one due to Di-. 
 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 suiferers 
 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. 
 
 53
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 in his experience of defect, he . found 
 that he could often dictate without 
 srreat 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- 
 54
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 55
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 both the best and the worst that, as he 
 thinks, can fah-ly 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," 
 56
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 57
 
 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 I 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 I 
 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 
 68
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 69
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 60
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 61
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 62
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 63
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 64
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 LyelFs ^' Principles of Gleology." 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 
 5 65
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 " 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, — diminish its activity, and 
 you will gradually destroy its power. 
 Successive generations will see the 
 faculty, or instinct, or whatever it 
 66
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 
 67
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 68
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 71
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 tionists were usually most concerned 
 with the questions: "Has there been 
 any transformation of species at all I " 
 " Is man descended from the lower 
 animals I " "Is the human mind, or, 
 again, conscience, or is religion, a 
 piu'ely 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?" "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 ? " "Do the new 
 72
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 theories aid tis 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 Grreece. It was so far, for him, no 
 73
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 74
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 " 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 
 
 /k ND 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 
 76
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 — 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 
 77
 
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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 
 78
 
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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 
 80
 
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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 
 6 81
 
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 specific respect, as theij then can de (e.g., 
 if they are, through the action of some 
 cause, raade 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 
 82
 
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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 
 83
 
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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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 
 85
 
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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- 
 86
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 
 87
 
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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 
 88
 
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 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 
 89
 
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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 
 91
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 92
 
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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 
 93
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 94
 
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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 teas 
 positively interested. Otherwise, these 
 discussions of knowledge and being ex- 
 pressed his classic limitation to certain 
 
 very simple intuitions, — the whole- 
 95
 
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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 
 96
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 • 7 97
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 98
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 ' 
 99
 
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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 tivo main propositions, 
 of which one deals with the permanence 
 of the quantity of the energy of any 
 
 closed physical system within which 
 100
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 tj^pe. 
 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 
 102
 
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 " contained motion." But, as Spencer 
 sees, the most of the evolutionary proc- 
 esses, and in particular the organic 
 processes, involve sometliing 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 
 103
 
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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 
 104
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 105
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 106
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 107
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 108
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 h, — then the unity of the formula is 
 kept, in that " primary " evolution, 
 which is a, is a genus, whereof the a 
 that is 6, viz., secondary evolution, is 
 then a species. But what 1 find in- 
 stead of this is that primary evolution 
 is indeed a, while secondary evolution 
 is in large part 7wt 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- 
 109
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 definiteness 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 
 110
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 111
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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, Wliat 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 
 112
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 8 113
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 hotv these various tendencies 
 114
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. 
 Greneralization 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- 
 115
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 while, you were ready to present a 
 beautifully ordered series of illustra- 
 tions of your theory, this showed that 
 5'our facts themselves were conceived 
 with a due respect to their o^ti 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 evolutionaiy 
 processes in orderly relations to one 
 another. 
 
 116
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. j 
 
 117
 
 HERBERT SPENCER'S 
 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES
 
 HERBERT SPENCER'S 
 
 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 
 
 AMONGST the numerous reflec- 
 /-% 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 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 
 123
 
 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 
 124
 
 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 
 125
 
 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 
 126
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 his childliood 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 
 127
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 128
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 9 129
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 130
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 131
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 132
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 133
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 134
 
 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, 
 135
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 136
 
 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 no 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 
 orderly knowledge of the laws of 
 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- 
 187
 
 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 Grreek 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 
 138
 
 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 
 139
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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, w^e 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 
 140
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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, 
 141
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 142
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 143
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 6?^s- 
 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." 
 
 144
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 10 145
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 bum 
 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- 
 146
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. 
 
 147
 
 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 ? " 
 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- 
 148
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 149
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 160
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 he to ignore so wide a range of vital 
 human interests as he did ignore ? 
 
 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- 
 151
 
 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- 
 152
 
 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, — 
 153
 
 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. 
 154
 
 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, 
 155
 
 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- 
 156
 
 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, 
 157
 
 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. 
 158
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 169
 
 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, 
 160
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 atl ' 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 
 162
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 excursion into Idealism. WTien 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 
 163
 
 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 
 164
 
 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 
 165
 
 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- 
 166
 
 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 
 167
 
 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 
 
 168
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 age, there was established a habit of seeking for 
 causes, as well as a tacit belief ia the universality 
 of causation. Along with this there went absence 
 of all suggestion of the miracalous. 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 
 169
 
 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 
 170
 
 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. 
 171
 
 Ill 
 
 ALREADY, 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 173
 
 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; 
 174
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Greorge 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 
 176
 
 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 ' ' 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- 
 178
 
 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 
 179
 
 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- 
 180
 
 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- 
 181
 
 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 " 
 182
 
 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 oi 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. 
 
 187
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 He was above the average height, — 
 about five feet nine or ten, — and had not 
 the upright, unbending, and yet elastic 
 carriage of a Glladstone, 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 
 
 188
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 a new system of short- 
 hand. W. G-. Spencer was remarkable 
 for his inventiveness in small contriv- 
 ances ; indeed, according to his sou, he 
 wholly devoted himself to such things 
 in his later years and let larger matters 
 go by the board. The son inherited his 
 189
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 190
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 191
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 of his education. An American cor- 
 respondent elicited from W. G. 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 Rev. 
 Thomas Spencer it is difficult to dis- 
 cover. He had the " little Latin and 
 
 less Greek " of the dramatist, and 
 192
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 13 193
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 194
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 195
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Grovernment" 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 
 196
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 197
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 199
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 200
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 201
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. Grrowing tired 
 of his idleness, he resumed work, and 
 to his joy and wonder discovered, as 
 Greorge 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 
 202
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 away to his native Derby, to Brighton, 
 or Timbridge 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 
 203
 
 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 
 Grardens (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 
 204
 
 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 
 205
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 that lie 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 
 206
 
 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 Logicae." 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 
 207
 
 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 
 Athenaeum 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 
 208
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 happy mixture of suggestion and ques- 
 tioning, he 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, Astkogeny, Ge- 
 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 OTit 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 
 210
 
 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 
 George 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 
 212
 
 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 
 213
 
 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- 
 brail 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 
 214
 
 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
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 mising Radical as he long was, he was 
 so far mfluenced 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 
 216
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 to accept the distinction is worthy of 
 being placed beside the more indignant 
 letter that Samuel Johnson addressed 
 to Lord Chesterfield. Had such a 
 degree, he wrote, been o^ered 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 
 217
 
 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 
 218
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 219
 
 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- 
 220
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 printmg 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, 
 221
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. Grlad- 
 stone; but when these peculiarities 
 were allowed for (as Griadstone 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 
 222
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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; 
 223
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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,^ 
 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 
 
 ^ 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? 
 
 224
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 Fitzjames 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 
 16 225
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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- 
 226
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 227
 
 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 Athenaeum Club. Every after- 
 noon he walked across Kensington 
 Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Grreen 
 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 
 
 228
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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. 
 229
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 230
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 wnmg 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 
 231
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 232
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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 
 233
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 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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