Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era. John Lord
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biography. About his private life we know even less than we know about that of Kant. The very few facts obtainable may be summed up in a score of sentences.
I
Herbert Spencer was born on April 27, 1820, at Derby, in England, and was an only surviving child. His father was a schoolmaster in the town named, and secretary of a philosophical society. From him the son seems to have imbibed the love of natural science and the faculty of observation conspicuous in his work. The father was particularly interested in entomology, and Spencer himself used to collect, describe, and draw insects when a boy. At the age of thirteen he was sent to study with an uncle, Rev. Thomas Spencer, a liberal clergyman and a scholar, with whom he remained three years, carrying on the study of natural history, which he had begun in childhood. He now devoted himself to mathematics, evincing a singular capacity for working out original problems. At this time, too, he became familiar with physical and chemical investigations, and already exhibited a strong tendency to experimental inquiry and original research. His aversion to linguistic studies put a university career out of the question. At the age of seventeen he entered the office of Sir Charles Fox and began work as a civil engineer, but about eight years afterward he gave up this profession, and devoted the whole of his time to scientific experiments and studies, and to contributions on philosophical questions to various periodicals. As early as 1842, in a series of letters to the Nonconformist newspaper on "The Proper Sphere of Government," he propounded a belief in human progress based on the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to its social surroundings, and he asserted the tendency of these social arrangements to assume of themselves a condition of stable equilibrium. From 1848 to 1853 he was sub-editor of the Economist newspaper, and in his first important work, "Social Statics," published in 1850, he developed the ethical and sociological ideas which had been set forth in his published letters. The truth that all organic development is a change from a state of homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity is regarded by Spencer as the organizing principle of his subsequent beliefs. It was gradually expounded and applied by him in a series of articles contributed to the "North British," the "British Quarterly," the "Westminster," and other reviews. In these essays, and especially in the volume of "Principles of Psychology," published in 1855, the doctrine of Evolution began to take definite form, and to be applied to various departments of inquiry. It was not until four years later–a fact to be carefully borne in mind by those who would estimate correctly the relation of Spencer to Darwin–that the publication of the latter's "Origin of Species" afforded a wide basis of scientific truth for what had hitherto been matter of speculation, and demonstrated the important part played by natural selection in the development of organisms. As early as March, 1860, Spencer issued a prospectus, in which he set forth the general aim and scope of a series of works which were to be issued in periodical parts, and would, collectively, constitute a system of philosophy. In 1862 appeared the "First Principles," and in 1867 the "Principles of Biology." In 1872 the "Principles of Psychology" was published; the first part of the "Principles of Ethics" in 1879; and his "Principles of Sociology" in three volumes, begun in 1876, was completed in 1896. In the preface to the third volume of the last-named work the author explains that the fourth volume originally contemplated, which was to deal with the linguistic, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic phenomena, would have to remain unwritten by reason of the author's age and infirmities. The astounding extent of Herbert Spencer's labors becomes, indeed, the more marvellous when one considers that impaired health has for many years incapacitated him for persistent application. Owing partly to his ill health, and partly to the absorbing nature of his occupation, his life has been a retired one, and in the ordinary sense of the term, uneventful. He has never married, and, although the high opinion of his writings formed by contemporaries has led to many academic honors being pressed upon him at home and abroad, these have all been declined. It only remains to mention that in 1882 he visited the United States, where the importance of his speculations had been early recognized, and that his home is now in Brighton, England.
II
In Mr. Spencer's latest book, "Facts and Comments," a little light is thrown on the author's habits, opinions, and predilections. Referring to the athleticism to which so much attention is paid just now in English and American universities, he points out how erroneous it is to identify muscular strength with constitutional strength. Not only is there error in assuming that increase of muscular power and increase of general vigor necessarily go together, but there is error in assuming that the reverse connection cannot hold. As a matter of fact, the abnormal powers acquired by gymnasts may be at the cost of constitutional deterioration. In a paper on "Party Government" the author maintains that what we boast of as political freedom consists in the ability to choose a despot, or a group of oligarchs, and, after long misbehavior has produced dissatisfaction, to choose another despot or group of oligarchs: having meanwhile been made subject to laws, some of which are repugnant. Abolish the existing conventional usages, with respect to party fealty,–let each member of parliament feel that he may express by his vote his adverse belief respecting a government measure, without endangering the government's stability,–and the whole vicious system of party government would disappear. In a paper on "Patriotism," Mr. Spencer says that to him the cry "Our country, right or wrong," seems detestable. The love of country, he adds, is not fostered in him by remembering that when, after England's Prime Minister had declared that Englishmen were bound in honor to the Khedive to reconquer the Soudan, they, after the reconquest, forthwith began to administer it in the name of the Queen and the Khedive, thereby practically annexing it; and when, after promising through the mouths of two colonial Ministers not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, the British Government proceeded to insist on certain electoral arrangements, and made resistance the excuse for a desolating war. As to the transparent pretence that the Boers commenced the war, Mr. Spencer reminds us that in the far West of the United States, where every man carries his life in his hands and the usages of fighting are well understood, it is held that he is the real aggressor who first moves his hand toward his weapon. The application to the South African contest is obvious. In an essay on "Style," Mr. Spencer tells us that his own diction has been, from the beginning, unpremeditated. It has never occurred to him to take any author as a model. Neither has he at any time examined the writing of this or that author with a view of observing its peculiarities. The thought of style, considered as an end in itself, has rarely, if ever, been present with him, his sole purpose being to express ideas as clearly as possible, and, when the occasion called for it, with as much force as might be. He has observed, however, he says, that some difference has been made in his style by the practice of dictation. Up to 1860 his books and review articles were written with his own hand. Since then they have all been dictated. He thinks that there is foundation for the prevailing belief that dictation is apt to cause diffuseness. The remark was once made to him, it seems, by two good judges–George Henry Lewes and George Eliot–that the style of "Social Statics" is better than the style of his later volumes; Mr. Spencer would ascribe the contrast to the deteriorating effect of dictation. A recent experience has strengthened him in this conclusion. When lately revising "First Principles," which originally was dictated, the cutting out of superfluous words, clauses, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs, had the effect of abridging the work by about one-tenth. Touching the style of other writers, Mr. Spencer points out the defects in some passages quoted from Matthew Arnold and Froude. He says that he is repelled by the ponderous, involved structure of Milton's prose, and he dissents from the applause of Ruskin's style on the ground that it is too self-conscious, and implies too much thought of effect. On the other hand, he has always been attracted by the finished naturalness of Thackeray.
A word should here be said about the misconception of Mr. Spencer's position with reference to the fundamental postulate of religions,–a misconception which used to be more current than it is now. He cannot fairly be described as a materialist. He is no more a materialist than he is a theist. He is, in the strictest sense of the word, an agnostic. He was the most conspicuous example of the thing before Huxley invented the word. The misconception was shared by no less a man than the late Benjamin Jowett, the well-known master of Balliol College, Oxford, who, in one of his published "Letters," says: "I sometimes think that we platonists and idealists are not half so industrious as those repulsive people who only 'believe what they can hold in their hand,' Bain, H. Spencer, etc., who are the very Tuppers of philosophy." It is hard to see how the law of evolution and other generalizations of an abstract kind with which Mr.