Born, at Derby, 27 April 1820. Privately educated. Civil Engineer, 1837–46. Sub-editor of “The Economist,” 1848–53. Contrib. to various reviews. Life mainly devoted to philosophical studies since 1855; occupied on his “Synthetic Philosophy” since 1860. Visit to U.S.A., 1882. Declined all academical distinctions. Works: “Social Statics,” 1851 [1850]; “A Theory of Population” (from “Westminster Rev.”), 1852; “Over-Legislation,” 1854; “Railway Morals and Railway Policy,” 1855; “The Principles of Psychology,” 1855 (enlarged edn., 2 vols. 1870–72); “Essays … from the Quarterly Reviews,” series I., 1858; series II., 1863; series III., 1874; library edn. (3 vols.), 1891; “Education,” 1861; “First Principles,” 1862; “The Principles of Biology” (2 vols.), 1864–67; “The Classification of the Sciences,” 1864; “The Study of Sociology,” 1873; “The Principles of Sociology” (3 vols.), 1876–96; “The Man versus the State,” 1884; “The Factors of Organic Evolution,” 1887; “The Principles of Ethics” [including “The Data of Ethics,” 1879, and “Justice,” 1891] (2 vols.), 1892–93; “The Inadequacy of Natural Selection” (from “Contemp. Rev.”) [1893]; “A Rejoinder to Prof. Weismann” (from “Contemp. Rev.”) [1893]; “Weismannism Once More” (from “Contemp. Rev.”), 1894; “Against the Metric System” (from the “Times”), 1896; “Various Fragments” [1852–1896], 1897. He has edited: “Descriptive Sociology” (8 pts.), 1873–81.

Personal

  Herbert Spencer’s article on the “Genesis of Science” is a good one. He will stand in the Biographical Dictionaries of 1954 as “Spencer, Herbert, an original and profound philosophical writer, especially known by his great work … which gives a new impulse to psychology, and has mainly contributed to the present advanced position of that science, compared with that which it had attained in the middle of the last century. The life of this philosopher like that of the great Kant, offers little material for the narrator.”

  Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we chatted with him on matters personal and philosophical. I owe him a debt of gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the brightest ray in a very dreary, wasted period of my life. I had given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The stimulus of his intellect, especially during our long walks, roused my energy once more and revived my dormant love of science. His intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and it was only the stimulus of a theory which could then have induced me to work. I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him that I learned to know Marian—to know her was to love her—and since then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!

  It is, I suppose, no new or unseemly revelation to say that Spencer has lived for the most part a life of poverty as well as of seclusion. He is a sensitive, silent, self-reliant man, endowed with a pure passion for knowledge, and the quickest, keenest love of justice and right. There is something indeed quite Quixotic, in the better sense, about the utterly disinterested and self-forgetting eagerness with which Herbert Spencer will set himself to see right done, even in the most trivial of cases. Little, commonplace, trifling instances of unfairness or injustice, such as most of us may observe every day, and which even the most benevolent of us will think himself warranted in passing by, on his way to his own work, without interference, will summon into activity—into positively unresting eagerness—all the sympathies and energies of Herbert Spencer, nor will the great student of life’s ultimate principles return to his own high pursuits until he has obtained for the poor sempstress restitution of the over-fare exacted by the extortionate omnibus-conductor, or seen that the policeman on duty is not too rough in his treatment of the little captured pickpocket. As one man has an unappeasable passion for pictures, and another for horses, so Herbert Spencer has a passion for justice.

  A quiet, modest, unassuming gentleman, with no assumption of greatness, with no air of pretence, with not the slightest approach to an appearance of patronage toward those who may be considered as less noted or great than himself, has been for the last two or three months seeking rest and refreshment here in America. Heard in public but once, seen in private only by a few, the country has still felt that a great man was here, a man like to those whom Emerson refers when he says, “A great man is himself an occasion.”

  Mr. Spencer is a bachelor. Evidently he has had no time to get married. He was not, however, a recluse, till obliged to be by the exigencies of his work and the necessity of caring for his health. In 1879 I missed the pleasure of meeting him at a dinner party, because, as he wrote, he had engaged to take two ladies to the opera that evening. Observe that he took two ladies; he knew how to protect himself; it is a mistake to suppose that philosophers are never practical. He has always entered into social life as much as he could without interfering with his work, and he has been a welcome and an agreeable guest in many households.

  Herbert Spencer, after his visit to America, was my fellow-voyager to England. I had pleasant talks with him, rather from him, when he was well enough to be on deck. He appeared to me a very full man, full of knowledge and sure of it, and not anxious for more from me, even if I had had it at his command, but I had not even on wood-engraving.

  The philosopher, whose life-work we have endeavoured to depict in this little volume, is still with us. He is now well advanced in years and in failing health; but his mind is amazingly fresh, as his last book brilliantly proved. In power of expression, dialectical skill, and wealth of illustration it need fear no comparison with any of his former writings. We cannot conclude this little work better than by expressing the hope that the “Grand Old Man” of Philosophy may still and for long continue to regale us from the treasure of his knowledge, and by offering our sincerest congratulations upon the fact that, amid difficulties which would soon have warned off less stout hearts and finally crushed less mighty minds, he has at last reached the goal which he set himself in his youth.

  Whatever the future has in store for philosophy, one prediction may confidently be made, that humanity will owe to Herbert Spencer an everlasting debt of gratitude. Forty years ago he set himself a colossal task. He resolved to give to the world a new system of philosophy. Ill-health dogged the footsteps of the philosopher all through the long spell of years, and at times it seemed as if the Synthetic Philosophy would be left an unfinished monument of splendid audacity. Handicapped by ill-health, uncheered by popular sympathy, unrewarded by the reading public, Herbert Spencer went his lonely way with a courage akin to heroism. Now he sees his task completed. Only those who have been privileged with Mr. Spencer’s friendship fully know the difficulties with which he had to battle, and can estimate the victory he has won. Many thinkers in the flush of opening manhood have conceived great systems of thought, and entered upon far-reaching projects. But too often the glow of intellectual enthusiasm has died away in presence of the daily drudgery of lonely toil. Even those who get beyond the Coleridgean stage of weaving philosophic dreams, find their ideal receding as they get tangled in the pleasures, anxieties, and ambitions of Vanity Fair. Herbert Spencer has refused to soil his robes in Vanity Fair. He has treated the baubles of the passing hour with philosophic indifference. Into old age he has carried the intellectual vigor of youth, and the mellow wisdom of ripe manhood. He has never wavered in his devotion to the great interpretative and constructive ideas with which his name is associated; and thus the reader has the rare pleasure of studying a system of thought which, from start to finish, breathes the spirit of continuity. There are no gaps to fill in; the various volumes hang on “First Principles” like golden beads upon a golden string. Herbert Spencer may rest from his labors with the proud consciousness that with his own right hand he has carved his path from obscurity to a philosophic throne. He now stands among the sceptred immortals.

  Mr. Spencer’s life for some fifty years has been a model of single-minded devotion to a great philosophic career. His resolute purpose to live his own life without hindrance from society, or distractions, or pursuit of fortune, fame, or rank; his unbending consistency and assertion of right and justice; his fervid enthusiasm for the cause of Peace, Industry, and Civilisation, form a spotless record in English letters.

  All who have the privilege of knowing him are aware of his wonderful courtesy and modesty, allied to intellectual integrity. Many members of the Athenæum Club have the pleasantest recollections of the veteran philosopher, his genial ways, his clear-sighted talk, his fair mindedness and his urbanity. In appearance he might be taken for a septuagenarian rather than an octogenerian. He still reads his correspondence without eyeglasses, and his hearing powers are above the average.

General

  The title of this book [“First Principles”] gives an inadequate notion of the importance of the subjects with which it deals, and of the reach and subtlety of thought which characterize it. Though some of the generalizations appear to me rather premature, no well-instructed and disciplined intellect can consider them without admiration of the remarkable powers displayed by their author.

  Mr. Spencer is one of the small number of persons who by the solidity and encyclopedic character of their knowledge, and their power of co-ordination and concatenation, may claim to be peers of M. Comte, and entitled to a vote in the estimate of him.

  The views he has very vigorously propounded are shared by a number of distinguished scientific men; and not a few of the unscientific believe that in them is shadowed forth the education of the future. It is perhaps to be regretted that Mr. Spencer has not kept the tone of one who investigates the truth in a subject of great difficulty, but lays about him right and left, after the manner of a spirited controversialist. This, no doubt, makes his book much more entertaining reading than such treatises usually are, but, on the other hand, it has the disadvantage of arousing the antagonism of those whom he would most wish to influence…. Mr. Spencer differs very widely from the great body of our schoolmasters. I have ventured in turn to differ on some points from Mr. Spencer; but I am none the less conscious that he has written not only one of the most readable, but also one of the most important books on education in the English language.

  For the past ten years I have been very carefully observing the point now in question; and my conclusion is, that it is not the “experts” who do the scoffing at Mr. Spencer, but almost without exception the literary dilettanti who have never received the special scientific training without which Mr. Spencer’s works cannot possibly be understood or appreciated. Hitherto Mr. Spencer’s reputation has been mainly a reputation with special investigators—such as Messrs. Hooker, Tyndall, and Huxley—and of this reputation the “general public” has within the last five or six years, caught the echo. As for the “general public” having any opinion of its own about the merits of the “First Principles” or the “Psychology,” I imagine it is about as well qualified to have an opinion about Schrauf’s “Physikalische Studien” or Schleicher’s “Vergleichende Grammatik.”

  Among Philosophers, as among scientific men, there are original and independent minds, of an order above those who explain, comment upon, and develop truths already discovered or foreseen, and make them known to all. These original minds are, so to speak, creators, who are felt, on approaching them, to be like men of another race, in power, depth, and unity of thought. Whether their discoveries remain permanent acquisitions, or whether they only give a new aspect to insoluble problems, they are recognized in the sovereign fashion which is due to them; they cannot touch any question without setting their mark upon it. Mr. Herbert Spencer appears to us to be a man of this order. One of his countrymen, who is well entitled to be critical, Mr. Stuart Mill, unhesitatingly places him among the greatest of the philosophers, and says that the variety and depth of his encyclopedic knowledge would permit him to treat, as equal, with the founder of the positivist school himself; that he is not a disciple, but a master.

  There are, as we have seen, some errors and inaccuracies of detail and some very important “beggings” of the main question as to the distinction between thought and feeling. Together with these defects there are also certain failures of analysis, resulting in a confusion of thought and a mode of treatment tending, by implication, to prejudice readers who are not on their guard, against truths which are not directly attacked or even explicitly referred to.

  There have been but few advocates of any system better fitted to enlarge, harmonize, compact, and present a philosophy than is Mr. Spencer. His powers of analysis and synthesis are extraordinary, and his style is clear, full, and plausible in the extreme. The breadth of the topics discussed, and his fulness of knowledge in each, enable him to frame an argument captivating in matter, and impressing the mind with more than its real strength. The scope and vigor of Mr. Spencer’s discrimination and combining powers are something to be proud of, and to be rejoiced in, on the part of all who heartily entertain the themes presented. His candor also is very noteworthy; the candor of a mind too much occupied with its own conclusions, too sure of their value and too able to confirm them by material taken from many diverse systems, to feel any strong temptation to leave its primary constructive labor and enter on an aggressive, destructive one. He pulls down only as he is in search of space or material for a new edifice.

  Mr. Herbert Spencer begins his lately published “Data of Ethics” by remarking that among the correlatives which imply one another in thought is the idea of part and whole; and he gives various illustrations to show that no correct conception of a part can be obtained without some understanding of the whole to which it belongs…. Mr. Spencer might have taken the work he was writing as a good exemplification of this principle; for it is part of a systematic body of thought, and is only to be fully understood in connection with it. Moreover, the entire system has been given out in detached fragments, which were only partially intelligible in the absence of the whole that did not yet exist. This protracted and piecemeal mode of publication has not only favored misconception on the part of the fair-minded, but it has offered advantages to ill-disposed critics which they have not been slow to use in producing erroneous impressions upon the public mind regarding the character of Spencer’s work…. That Mr. Spencer is in the strictest sense the creator of his own work is not open to doubt, nor has there been any intelligent question about it. That which characterizes his system of thought, its wealth of facts, its searching analysis, its synthetic grasp, its logical unity, and its noble beneficence of application—stamps it also as the product of a single, original, and independent mind.

  Mr. Herbert Spencer may be said to have taken the sphere of the naturalist and the spheres of the metaphysician and the psychologist, and drawn a circle around, embracing and unfolding them all, and adopting them as his province. If Mr. Darwin’s attempt to map out the process by which vegetable and animal life are gradually constructed was an ambitious effort, the task which Mr. Herbert Spencer undertook was of still more vast and venturous scope…. His views of education and of civic government seem occasionally to degenerate almost to the degree of crotchets. His style is not fascinating. It is clear, strong, and simple, but it has little literary beauty, and borrows little from illustration of any kind. Mr. Spencer himself utterly undervalues what he regards as superfluous words. Attractiveness of style is part of the instrumentality by which a great writer or speaker accomplishes his ends. If a man would convince, he must not disdain the arts by which people can be induced to listen. Much of Mr. Spencer’s greatest work had long been little better than a calling aloud to solitude for the lack of the attractiveness of style which he despises, but which Plato or Aristotle would not have despised. Mr. Spencer, however, rather prides himself on not caring much about the Greeks and their literature. A great thinker he undoubtedly is—one of the greatest thinkers of modern times; perhaps a man to be classed among the the few great and original philosophers of all time. It is only of late years that his fame has begun to spread among his own countrymen. Gradually it has become known to the English public in general that there was among them a great lonely thinker, surveying the problems of mind and matter as from some high, serene watchtower. His words were well known among reading people in the United States long before they had ceased to be the exclusive property of a very select few in England.

  Mr. Spencer’s strength lies in his familiarity with the conceptions of physical science. He astonishes his readers through the apparently encyclopedic comprehensiveness of his scientific information. This qualifies him to take up and repeat with an effort of imposing authority the parable of his British predecessors, to the general effect that such conceptions and such information constitute the impassable limit of all possible human knowledge. His weakness is in his deficient knowledge and grasp of philosophic ideas. I find no evidence that the history of philosophic thought is much better than a sealed book for Mr. Spencer.

  Many persons will have welcomed with great interest Mr. Herbert Spencer’s recent work on “The Data of Ethics.” He is the recognized exponent of a principle which has of late been asserting a claim to be paramount in all domains of human thought and life. He has projected a comprehensive system of philosophy, embracing the whole sphere of existence—inanimate, animate, and human—founded upon the hypothesis of Evolution.

  In criticism of the earlier portion of “The Data of Ethics,” it seems to me that Mr. Spencer’s own theory fails to account for the facts which he himself recognizes as coming within the moral sphere; and, on the other hand, that he does not accurately represent the intuitional theory, and consequently his criticism of it is altogether wide of the mark.

  Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy has at least one conspicuous merit—it can claim to be the most comprehensive, or rather ambitious, of English Philosophies. It is in its psychology distinctively English and empirical; but in its spirit and endeavour, distinctively encyclopædic and transcendental.

  I began to read Mr. Spencer’s works more than twenty years ago. They have been meat and bread to me. They have helped me through a great many difficulties. I desire to own my obligation personally to him, and to say that if I had the fortune of a millionaire, and I should pour all my gold at his feet, it would be no sort of compensation compared to that which I believe I owe him.

  I can see no boundaries to the scope of the philosophy of evolution. That philosophy is sure to embrace all the interests of man on this earth. It will be one of its crowning triumphs to bring light and order into the social problems which are of universal bearing on all mankind. Mr. Spencer is breaking the path for us into this domain. We stand eager to follow him into it, and we look upon his work on sociology as a grand step in the history of science. When, therefore, we express our earnest hope that Mr. Spencer may have health and strength to bring his work to a speedy conclusion, we not only express our personal respect and good-will for himself, but also our sympathy with what, I doubt not, is the warmest wish of his own heart, and our appreciation of his great services to true science and to the welfare of mankind.

  Mainly a systematizer and organizer of ideas—a sort of intellectual clearing-house on a scale befitting the nineteenth century.

  This man, to whom we have been so ready to listen, has during the last quarter of a century wrought a work that, I think I may say, without exaggeration, has no parallel in the history of human thought. He has so wrought himself into the very fibre, the warp and woof of this modern world, that I can say of him, what can be said of no other man living, and what has never been said of any man who has ever lived; he has made himself so vital a part of science, of philosophy, of education, of the science of government, of sociology, of ethics, of religion—he has so mastered and entered into the possession of all these great realms of human thought and human life, which in their totality almost make up what is meant by life itself, that to-day no serious and intelligent thinker can discuss any important question pertaining to any one of these departments without being compelled to reckon with Herbert Spencer.

  A biologist must, I fancy, rise from a review of Mr. Spencer’s work with very mingled feelings of approbation and disappointment. There is wonder at the comprehensive grasp of thought which seizes building material for its argument from so many fields of knowledge. There is admiration for his genius in classifying phenomena and for the polemic power with which his generalizations are stated. But it would probably be safe to say that, had not the “Origin of Species” been written, the hypothesis presented in the “Principles of Biology” would still be regarded as but a “philosophical phantasy.” For the biologist, the facts presented are too general, too little specific, to prove their case. There is in Mr. Spencer (as it appears to me) too marked that theological tendency, which he himself so well condemns to confound belief with evidence, and mistake the desire for a truth as a proof of the truth itself. There is too rapid a hurrying on toward the fruit of his thought without sufficiently binding together the thought itself with a tissue of facts.

  Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol, but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput-mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him as wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer.

  In any list of living Englishmen eminently distinguished for the originality and importance of their books, Mr. Spencer cannot fail to be ranked high. Yet, as every student of his later work knows, he has stated in the preface of one of those bold and inexpensive volumes in which he enshrines his thought, that the sale of his books does not cover the cost of their publication. This is the case of a man famous, it is not too much to say, in every civilized country on the globe. In pure literature there is probably no second existing instance so flagrant as this.

  Mr. Spencer’s little book, “The Man versus the State,” is the most conspicuous work of recent years in defence of “individualism” and in opposition to the growing tendency of State intervention in matters which the older English economists and Radical politicians held to be best left to private enterprise and unchecked competition. From its very nature it demands and challenges critical examination. Mr. Spencer’s conception of what the State is appears to me to involve grave philosophical errors, and to be inconsistent with principles which he himself has done more than any one else to popularise…. No one who has any interest in philosophy can refuse admiration to an Englishman who has given the energies of his life to philosophical studies, who believes that philosophy must be systematic, and who, although acting up to this belief, has made his countrymen read his books. But there are some things that demand more respect than distinguished persons—philosophy itself, and the growing sense of a common and public responsibility to diminish the misery of human life.

  So large is the field over which Mr. Spencer’s writings have ranged, so many are the special branches of knowledge he has laid under contribution, so difficult to the ordinary mind are the abstractions in which he has dealt and the terminology in which they are couched, that this great reputation is with the large majority of the intelligent men who accept it more as a matter of faith than of reason. But this rather adds to than detracts from the popular estimate; for what to us is vague often seems on that account the greater, and what we have no means of measuring, all the more profound. Nor does Mr. Spencer’s standing as one of the greatest, to many the very greatest, of philosophers, lack substantial basis in the opinions of those deemed competent to gauge intellectual power.

  This volume “Social Statics,” contained an extremely fresh and original treatment of social problems; was startling in many of its ideas, and extremely radical in its whole tone and tendencies. It is natural, therefore, that it should have made no small stir in the thinking world, though of course it never applied to a very large body of readers. That which it did for him personally was to bring him rather prominently into public notice, and to introduce him to a select circle of advanced thinkers, who were not slow to recognize the exceptional strength and independence of his mind.

  Who knows the influence Gall exerted, directly or indirectly, on Mr. Herbert Spencer? It seems to me impossible for any man, however great his genius, to write a work like the “Principles of Psychology,” without relying at least to some extent on the legacies of the past. True, Mr. Spencer made no mention of Gall’s name; but he does not on any occasion give references to or make quotations from authors who have preceded him.

  It is incredible that the great saint of the new departure in Judaism should be traduced by the great saint of modern evolution, when they ought to be brothers in unity. In point of real character I do not know that there is anything to choose. In certain very trying circumstances Mr. Spencer has shown himself a perfect Christian, and if I knew as much about him as I do about Saint Paul I dare say I should find him just as good—not so fiery in temperament, not so impetuous in style, not so irresistible in his current of thought or action (suppose the enthusiasm of investigation necessitates an entirely different mental constitution from the enthusiasm of humanity)—but just as single-hearted, just as truth-seeking in regard to the action of structure on function, as was Paul over the action of Jewish law on Gentiles. But that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth also philosophers, even one thing befalleth them—the necessity of knowing what they are talking about. I abate no whit of positiveness regarding Mr. Spencer’s orthodoxy as soon as Mr. Spencer thinks it worth his while to learn what orthodoxy is, or to render the Bible as accurately as he renders a bird track. But, until that happy hour arrives, so often as the ever-recurring question thunders down from the Spirit of Truth, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Thousands of his most ardent disciples will rise and answer, shame-faced, but unwavering, “Herbert Spencer, God bless him!”

  Spencer’s averages are interesting as belonging to a scientific manner,—the manner, moreover, of the author to whom is due the theory that economy of attention is the governing principle of style. We find the discourse carefully analyzed into short paragraphs. These are mostly loose in structure, a definite conclusion being offered in the first sentence and defended in those following. Evidently Spencer’s theory of periodic structure as the more economical, stops short of the paragraph. It is interesting, again, to note that, while Spencer’s sentences rather favor the periodic type, they are not long; like the short paragraphs, they are for the untechnical reader, if not for the popular one. The variability in sentence-length is quite as great as could be expected from a style appealing so little to the emotions: the percentage of sentences of less than 15 words is 17 per cent. The coherence and sequence of Mr. Spencer’s prose are philosophical and correct. The use of connectives is less than might be supposed.

  It is probably accurate to describe Mr. Spencer as an empiricist; though he has added to the accustomed first principles of empiricism certain doctrines of his own which, while they do not strengthen his system, make it somewhat difficult to classify.

  Mr. Spencer seeks to shake himself free of the charge of being opposed to religion because he affirms “that out of the depths of unfathomable mystery there may … emerge the certitudes of religion.” But those familiar, as we are, with Mr. Spencer’s system will understand what that “may” is worth. We are reminded by it of the proverb which declares there may be such things as volant, nonruminating artiodactyles, but at the same time declares them to be “very unlikely birds.”

  We rightly make much of a man like Nansen who has braved the dangers and solitudes of the frozen North in eager search for the physical Pole; but we are apt to overlook the no less heroic qualities, and the far more tremendous labours, of such a man as Spencer, who gives forty years of his life to prodigious researches and the most arduous speculations in search of what may be called the Polar thought of the Universe—the grand conception that will explain the progress of all matter, and life, and human institutions from the beginning until now. No less than this is what Spencer sought to do. Darwin applied the doctrine of Evolution to the development of Organic Life only; and by his vast accumulations and admirable ordering of biological facts has undoubtedly done more than any other man to place it almost beyond dispute. But Spencer went far beyond that. He showed how Evolution might account not only for the development of animal and plant life on the globe, but also from the genesis of worlds, the slow upbuilding of the earth into its present form, the grouping of human beings into races and nations, and the rise and expansion of language and of law, of philosophy and of government, of morality and of religion, and of all social institutions from their crude germ in the rudimentary ideas of the untutored ages to their full flower and fruit in the marvellous civilizations of the nineteenth century. Truly a sublime and comprehensive theory, which, even more completely than Darwin’s seems to realize once again the cosmical grandeur of the Newtonian Conception of a unity of power and of law binding together all things within the universe.

  Many years have now passed away since Herbert Spencer claimed the whole domain of knowledge as his own, and undertook to revise, in accordance with the latest lights, the whole sphere of philosophy. What must have seemed intolerable presumption in 1860 became in 1896 a completed task. In universality of knowledge he rivals Aristotle and Bacon at a time when the sphere of learning is immensely larger than in their epochs.

  For Germany, Herbert Spencer, until the beginning of the ’eighties, did not exist, and one is scarcely liable to err by assuming that even at the present day Mr. Spencer, for many German savants and philosophers, is not much more than a name, a fact so much more astounding as Spencer, contrary to all other English philosophers, has that in the whole character of his philosophy which makes it akin to German thought. He in no way shares the instinctive aversion of his countrymen to the deductive treatment, but everywhere insists on a close union (innige Verknüpfung) of the inductive and deductive methods; and again, unlike his countrymen, he sees in the analysis, not the aim and end of Philosophy, but merely a labour preparatory to the completion of her great task which lies in the synthesis, i. e., in the binding and welding together of the analytically ascertained truths and facts into one harmonious Weltanschauung.

  “The Synthetic Philosophy,” just completed, is distinguished for the vastness of its design, the accomplishment of which gives Mr. Spencer a place among the few encyclopædic thinkers of the world. His philosophy is interesting also because it concentrates and reflects the spirit of the time. No other thinker has so strenuously laboured to gather together all the accumulations of modern knowledge and to unite them under general conceptions. The alliance between the Spencerian philosophy and physical science is unusually close; and Mr. Spencer in his illustrations shows an all-embracing range of knowledge, which becomes minute in those branches of science bearing directly upon the phenomena of life. The future only can determine the exact value of this knowledge, for there are grave differences of opinion between Mr. Spencer and some of the leading biologists, like Weismann; but it may at least be said of him that he is the first philosopher since Bacon (“who wrote on science like a Lord Chancellor”), or at latest Leibnitz, who has met men of science on something like equal terms within the domain of science. Mr. Spencer’s unique interest is that he has attempted an exhaustive survey of all the facts relating to the development of life and of society. He does not go beyond that, to the origin of all things; for it is one of his cardinal principles that behind the Knowable there is dimly visible a something not only unknown but unknowable.

  The strength of Mr. Spencer’s writings lies first in the absolute perfection of his logic; to use a mechanical analogy, they are as it were the outpourings of a perfect logical machine, whose levers and cranks are so adjusted as to work without the possibility of error; a loom in which no strand of weft or woof has ever become entangled, and from which the finest cloth is drawn without spot or blemish. Deduction, Induction, and Verification are so perfectly blended that in this nineteenth century it seems impossible to conceive their higher development. The constituent parts of this logical method which usually excite the greatest wonder and surprise are the brilliant and unsurpassed power of generalization, which is ever present, and which unites in one whole, subjects which at first appear to be as far removed as the antipodes upon our globe. This of course implies the knowledge of an immense range of subjects; and any one reading through, say only one volume such as “First Principles,” may easily count up more than the metaphorical “speaking acquaintance” with over thirty clearly and well defined sciences, commencing with Anatomy at one end of the alphabet, and ending with Zoölogy at the other. How accurate this knowledge is may be seen by the currency his writings have amongst men of pure science,—meaning by this term, specialists in the smaller departments and branches of human understanding.

  My criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer implies no disrespect to himself, no want of appreciation of the great work he has performed, his vast knowledge, his active, comprehensive, and acute intellect, and his heroic devotion to the cause of scientific truth. If he would only incorporate systematically into his sociological system those “views” and “conceptions” which he declares he himself holds, but which are not incorporated with that system at present, his teachings would constitute the strongest of authorities for those truths of practical sociology which it has been my own endeavour to elucidate.

  If Comte tells us, “Be parts; be mere parts, living for the sake of the whole,” Spencer thinks such advice the very worst possible. Each for himself; fair-play all round; justice the supreme consideration, politically and socially; the occasional surrender of individual rights purely a personal matter, with which public action and public opinion dare not interfere—such is Mr. Spencer’s social programme. It is the antithesis of Comte’s. Where Comte says, “Yes,” Spencer says “No,” very nearly all the way through. We take it therefore, that, beyond serving to explain his views lucidly and add a grace to them, the doctrine of the social organism does nothing for Mr. Spencer.

  In the cause of truth Mr. Spencer worked for twenty-four years without fee or reward. His solitary intellectual labours were utterly ignored by the public, and, in spite of that, he laboriously and heroically toiled up the steep ascent of philosophy. In this there is a grandeur quite Miltonic. In the midst of the general neglect Mr. Spencer had the sympathy of a number of philosophic thinkers who knew his real worth. A number of American admirers, hearing of his determination to stop the series, forwarded to Mr. Spencer through Mr. Youmans, his devoted adherent and friend, a purse of money and a gold watch. The money, with characteristic high-mindedness, he accepted as a public trust for public ends.

  All that is best in the thought of our own age has been summoned to his aid by Mr. Spencer. His generalisations have been based upon the widest possible induction from particulars. He has only refrained from further verification of his theories when he realised that for all practical purposes the proofs already furnished were sufficient. “The Synthetic Philosophy,” with which his name shall ever be associated—in other words, the system in which the great doctrine of Evolution is applied to the “whole” of the universe of life and thought, and not merely, as in the Darwinian theory, to a section of it—seeks to supply an explanation of much that has been esteemed “unknowable,” by applying the same rigorously scientific methods to the problems of “Life and Mind” as have been employed in science.

  If asked to select the one book among the many he has written by which Mr. Spencer has done most for the world I would unhesitatingly say it is his “First Principles;” all the more because it contains, along with his most characteristic teaching, the largest residuum of disputable propositions. I cannot here discuss its prevailing merits, or its place in the treasure-house of English philosophical literature, and I have expressed elsewhere my dissent from much that it contains. But, while even a casual reader is struck by its width and depth—while there may be some elements in his remarkable synthesis left out—no ingenuous student can peruse and re-peruse that volume without finding himself a debtor to the man who wrote it. Idealist and Realist, Monist and Dualist, every thinker of the century must own the debt—however he may construe it.

  His chief work, “A System of Synthetic Philosophy” (in ten volumes) embraces all the branches of philosophical knowledge, and, particularly in the sections “Principles of Sociology” (a word coined by Spencer) and “Principles of Ethics,” is the most valuable production of English philosophy that has appeared since Bacon’s days.

  Let me here end in hearty sympathy with the distinguished thinker whom I have so long been criticising, and wish him all success in his crusade against the follies of the fashionable world. I fear, however, that he will not persuade any large part of that world to follow him through the two volumes of “The Principles of Ethics.”

  The works of Herbert Spencer exhibit the latest form of the positive philosophy, and foreshadow its future development. Reverent and bold, reverent for truth, though not for the forms of truth, and not for much that we hold true,—bold in the destruction of error, though without that joy in destruction which often claims the name of boldness,—these works are interesting in themselves and in their relation to the earnest thought of the time. They seem at the first sight to form the turning-point in the positive philosophy; but closer examination shows us that it is only a new and marked stage in a regular growth.

  There are blanks in his exegesis which working biologists, for example, are apt to accentuate; and to the purely reasoning mind he often seems, particularly in his “Data of Ethics,” to have somehow let slip from his hands the lines that, held strictly, would have enabled him every instant to test his results by first principles, and thus save himself much that seems fruitless and ineffectual thinking. His aim indeed often appears to have escaped him; he substitutes immediate for ultimate causation, and the splendid chain of his reasoning, which every lucid sentence slowly forges out, is often broken by a link of base metal. In the main, nevertheless, his work is of the highest and finest quality and power. Its results have permeated throughout the world; it has changed the mental outlooks of all modern men; and made even the simplest realise that the future of society lies in the hands of science.