CHAPTER XII.

HERBERT SPENCER.

HERBERT SPENCER is the leading living representative of that type of thought which we have found prevailing in British climes all along from Bacon to Mill. The sceptre so long and effectively wielded by Mill was transferred, without difficulty, into the hands of Mr. Spencer. As in the death of the former, one of his admirers, with pardonable enthusiasm of affection, but unpardonable insularity of view, deplored the loss of "not only the great philosopher, but also the great prophet, of our time," so Mr. Spencer, living, is to his followers (in the language employed by one of them) "the greatest of living philosophers," and the undoubted prophet of a new dispensation. Is the dispensation indeed a new one, or only a continuation of the old? What, too, are the prophet's credentials, and of what worth are they? These are the points which we must presently consider.

When Herbert Spencer's biography shall be written, the world may surely expect to find in it a story of peculiar interest. As yet, naturally, only a meagre outline of the facts on which it would be founded has been given to the world. Mr. Spencer was born in Derby, April 27, 1820. His father and grandfather were teachers. Owing to his imperfect health, his early education was superintended at home by his father. Much of the time he was left free to amuse and instruct himself in his own way.

Under these circumstances he developed a marked fondness for entomology, and busied himself in finding, rearing, and making drawings of various members of the insect world. He assisted his father in physical and chemical experiments, and began to indicate a peculiar aptitude (says Prof. Youmans) for "manipulation and invention." At the age of thirteen he was sent to study with his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, rector of Hinton, with whom he remained three years. Here his attention appears to have been specially directed to mathematics. On returning to Derby, it is reported that he studied. perspective with his father, on the principle of independent discovery. The problems were given to him in such form that he had himself to discover, and not simply learn. by rote, their solution. His father is said to have published an "Inventional Geometry," prepared on this plan. At the age of sixteen a "new and ingenious theorem in descriptive geometry" was published by Herbert Spencer in the "Civil Engineers' and Architects' Journal." In the following year he began work as a civil engineer under Charles Fox, on the London and Birmingham railway. After four years of such employment he devoted two more to mathematical and miscellaneous studies. "All the time," says a writer in the New American Encyclopædia, "he had in progress some scheme of invention, improvements in watch-making, machinery for the manufacture of type by compression of the metal instead of casting, a new form of printing-press, and the application of electrotype to engraving, afterward known as the glyptograph."

It will thus be seen that the whole stress of Spencer's early education, as well as the general bent of his mind,

were preeminently mechanical and physical. The liberal training of the university was denied to him, as to Mill, and it does not appear that the lack of it was supplied for him by any such thorough course of home training in classical and historical literature as was provided for his predecessor. Indeed, such a course as Mill was put through would have been almost certainly fatal in its consequences for one of Spencer's delicate constitution.

But the taste for literary work was also early developed in Mr. Spencer. As a comparative youth he became a frequent contributor to various (mostly scientific) journals. In the year 1842 he began to publish in the "Nonconformist" a series of papers on "The Proper Sphere of Government." These papers were collected together and published in pamphlet form in the following year. In the same year he visited London in search of literary employment, but not succeeding, returned again to the practice of engineering. From 1848 to 1852 he assisted in editing the "Economist." Henceforth his life and work were those of a writer. In numerous review articles on the most varied subjects he began to set forth the applications of the conception subsequently developed by him in more systematic form—the conception of physical evolution as a universal law. His first book, which, like all his other later ones, is pervaded by the same conception, was published when he was thirty years old, in 1850, under the name of "Social Statics." In 1855 followed "The Principles of Psychology." In 1860 the prospectus of a "system of philosophy," founded on the idea of physical evolution, was announced, and to the production of it the author, amid many oppositions of infirm health and (at the first) of deficient means, has steadily devoted

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himself. There have appeared, in accordance with this plan, the "First Principles," "Biology," "Psychology," "Sociology" (in part), and "The Data of Ethics"; not to mention other writings which, if not a systematic part of the general scheme, are all subservient to its main purpose. 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 effect 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. He is familiar with the ideas and methods of British psychology and psychological pseudophilosophy, and he knows something, at least, of that negative side of Kant's doctrine which we have above (Chapter X) recognized as akin to, and due to the influence of, British thought. But this, if the views maintained in this volume are correct, must be regarded as an accomplishment of doubtful philosophic value. At most, it can only encourage an insular Philistinism, and not speculative or spiritual insight. But when, therefore, I note in Mr. Spencer the conspicuous absence of such insight, or of specifically philosophical intelligence, I am simply noting that which was also true of his intellectual forerunners, and which the very exclusiveness of his scientific training was naturally calculated to intensify, rather than to correct.

LIBRAR

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The unwelcome verdict which the student ofthe i tory of philosophy finds himself compelled to pass upon that line of British thought which we have contemplated in these chapters is, that it remains essentially at that stage which is illustrated by the pre-Socratic "philosophers" of ancient Greece. The earliest of these thinkers directed their attention to the contemplation of the physical universe, and sought to invent and, more or less, to demonstrate by experimental proof some descriptive theory concerning the process of the universe. For the notion. that the physical world had resulted, historically, through some evolutionary process suggested itself from the outset. However heterogeneous and varied the world, in its contents, might at present appear, yet it was held that all things were but diverse modifications of one elementary material nature. Hence the earliest "philosophers" (aptly termed in the history of philosophy, the rather, "physiologists," or physicists, men who theorized about sensible nature) applied themselves to discover what was the original state of matter, whether water, air, fire, or some "indefinite" element (just as, now-a-days, theorizers of the same class, armed with a better knowledge of physical phenomena, conclude that it was gaseous, or “nebular"), and to define, or at least name, the law (order or process) of the subsequent evolution of the universe. Thus it was common with them to hold that the universe was subject to periodic evolution and dissolution (like Spencer to-day), and Heraclitus went so far as to estimate. the number of years included in one such period. One can but admire the divining instinct which enabled these children in science to anticipate conclusions which the more comprehensive knowledge of our days is deemed.