SPENCER AND SPENCERISM Cornell University Jbrary The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029047722 SPENCER AND SPENCERISM BY HECTOR MACPHERSON AUTHOR OF " THOMAS CARLTLB " AND " ADAM SMITH ' NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 1900 :? u 'ihl i". -f-TT ^ . \ sTi, -2- T COPTHIGHT, 1900, bt doubledat, page dc CO. y?7L^ liTortooolJ ^TEBS J. 8. Cushmg & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood MasB. U.S.A. PREFACE A PHILOSOPHIC thinker of the first rank is always known by the amount of literature which his writ- ings call forth. Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel — these in their respective spheres were epoch-makers. From the philosophic germs which they scattered have sprung whole libraries of con- troversial literature. In like manner Mr. Herbei't Spencer has paid the penalty of his great philosophic fame. As an epoch-maker, he, too, has had to pass through the fire of hostile criticism. For a great number of years his philosophy has been the battle- ground of controvei'sialists who, differing in many ways among themselves, have united in their at- tempts to discredit a system of thought which threatened to destroy long-cherished opinions and stereotyped beliefs. One result of this has been that to the general public the Synthetic Philosophy, embedded as it has been in the works of critics, has necessarily appeared in a fragmentary form. My object in writing this book has been to present to vi PREFACE the general reader Spencerism in lucid, coherent shape. Nothing can take the place of Mr. Spencer's own writings, but mastery of these demands an amount of leisure and philosopliic enthusiasm which are by no means widespread. In this design I have had the approval of Mr. Spencer. He has taken a kindly interest in the undertaking, and he responded to my request for cer- tain materials. The book is by no means a slavish reproduction of Mr. Spencer's writings. Taking my stand upon the fundamental ideas of the Synthetic Philosophy, I have used them in my own way to interpret and illustrate the great evolutionary process. While, therefore, Mr. Spencer has been in full sympathy with the aim of the book, he does not stand committed to the detailed treatment of the subject. The work has indeed been a labor of love. Should it induce the reader to study Spen- cerism as expounded by the master himself, my reward will be ample. I should be lacking in gratitude did I not express my obligations to the elaborate work of Mr. John Fiske, entitled Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy. No student of Spencer can afford to neglect Mr. Fiske's book, which it would be difficult to rival in point PREFACE vii of lucidity and intellectual ability. I am also in- debted to Professor Hudson of California for his admirable book, Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. In the philosophic and economic parts of the book, I have drawn upon a few para- graphs in my Carlyle and Adam Smith. Knowledge of a philosopher's system of thought is greatly helped by knowledge of the philosopher himself, and in this respect I have been exceedingly fortunate. The recollection of my personal relations with Mr. Spen- cer will ever be to me a priceless possession. HECTOR MACPHERSON. Edinbukgh, April, 1900. CONTENTS OHAPTBB I. EARLY LIFE 11. INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT . III. EVOLUTION OP THE EVOLUTION THEORY IV. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . V. THE COSMOS UNVEILED .... VI. THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE .... VII. THE EVOLUTION OP MIND VIH. THE ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . IX. THE POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY X. THE .ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . XI. THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION . XII. THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT OF SPENCERISM XIII. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OP SPENCERISM . 1 18 39 54 66 84 105 124 146 169 189 201 216 INDEX 235 CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE Caelylb has remarked that the history of the world is in the main the history of its great men. There is profound truth in the saying, though in his antip- athy to a purely scientific treatment of civilization Carlyle used his great man theory in fantastic and misleading fashion. The intellectual contribution which each century makes to the progress of the world takes its hue from the dominating influence of its leading thinkers. True greatness is epoch- making. If we wish to discover the place of a thinker in the great evolutionary chain, we must apply the epoch-making test. The mind of the great man is like an overflowing reservoir which makes for itself new channels and fertilizes hitherto unknown tracts of thought. Or to use a biological simile, the sociological effects produced by the great man resemble the changes caused in the fauna and flora of a country by the introduction of a new species. Think of the impoverishment which history would sustain by the obliteration of the names, say, B 1 2 HERBERT SPENCER of Paul, Augustine, Calvin. Those thinkers not only unlocked new forces in their day and generation, but even yet from their tombs they hold sway over the minds of countless thousands. Their specula- tions formed the creeds of centuries, and their passionate and yearning musings upon human life and destiny find echo in the souls of some of the noblest of earth's sons. When the long night of authority and credulity was drawing to a close, when the sun of inquiry was dawning above the horizon, great thinkers arose who, from the moun- tain tops of science, foresaw the meridian glory of the Age of Reason. After the splendid work of Mr. John Morley, it is superfluous to dwell upon the achievements in the cause of enlightenment of the intellectual heroes of the Revolution epoch. The great constructive systems of the past had not only fallen before the assault of Reason, but had become cumberers of the ground. The decaying creeds of the past not only impeded the progress of thought, but were a barrier to social amelioration. Paths had to be cut through the jungle, and, in the name of humanity, abuses hoary with the sanctity of re- ligion had to be attacked. For the pioneering work accomplished, humanity is everlastingly debtor to the bold thinkers of the Revolution epoch. Not content with the work of destruction, they set EARLY LIFE 3 themselves to the task of construction. Humanity cannot live on negation. Through the writings of Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopsedists, may be detected attempts to formulate a conception of man and his destiny which would take the place of the theologic conception which in pre -scientific times had done duty for ages as man's attempt to solve the problem of Existence; indeed the idea of the Uneyclopcedia rose out of the feeling that destruction needed to be supplanted by painstaking attempts to attain to a comprehensive, coherent theory of life, in which humanity would find at once intellectual satisfaction and emotional har- mony. Out of dissatisfaction with mere negation grew not only the Uneyclopcedia, but the imposing systems of Holbach and Helvetius. The time was not ripe for imposing philosophic systems, for the simple reason that knowledge of the universe and man had not gone far enough to be organized on a scientific basis. No system can endure which rests on premature generalizations and unverified speculations ; unconsciously the Rationalists of the Revolution imported into their creed-making the unreliable methods of the Theologians. Still their failure on the constructive side should not lessen our admiration for the splendid work they did as liberators of humanity. They loosened the hold of decaying creeds ; they cleared the dense forest of 4 HERBERT SPENCER thought ; they pointed the way to the promised land of mental freedom and social progress. After the French Revolution had spent its force, progressive thinkers became alive to the purely destructive nature of that movement on the in- tellectual side. Among them was Comte — a thinker whose great merits have not had adequate rec- ognition. Comte had the true sign of greatness — intellectual vision. He was not content, like Hume and analytic thinkers generally, to resign himself to the gloom of the forest, or to smother the ever-recurring thoughts of man and his destiny in the petty butterfly attractions of an Epicurean philosophy. His great ambition was to provide a path and an ideal by which humanity would march boldly on to the expansive uplands and heights of truth. Comte's methods were distasteful to his English readers. His colossal egoism, his prefer- ence for mediseval modes of thought, and his dis- paragement of individual liberty and reason, set on edge the critical teeth of many who sjrmpathized with his high-souled endeavors. Destructive critics like Huxley used Comte in order to make sport for the Philistines. The fatal blow to Comte's influence came from the new idea of Evolution, which wrecked his philosophic system as it did the systems of Buckle and Mill. All three thinkers found themselves stranded because of their inability to incorporate EARLY LIFE 5 the new views wtich were to revolutionize philo- sophical as well as scientific thought. Still, in spite of the ridicule of Huxley and the contemptuous treatment accorded to him in France and England, Comte deserves to be held in remembrance as a thinker of fine caliber, prophetic vision, fertile thought, and massiveness of mind. The dominating idea of the last half of the nine- teenth century is Evolution — an idea so far-reaching in its influence, so mesmeric in its power, that at its touch all other ideas crystallize round it and, as if by magic, yield to its potent sway. The thinker with whom history will imperishably associate the idea of Evolution is Herbert Spencer. Perhaps in no sphere has the influence of the Evolution theory been more indirectly potent than in biography. So long as man was treated as an extra-mundane creation there was a natural tendency to concen- trate attention upon the dramatic and incalculable side of his nature. Emphasis was laid upon the inner psychical factors to the exclusion of those physical conditions which play such a prominent part in human development. Great men, in the language of Carlyle, were messengers of the Eternal — messengers who so dominated their environment as to baffle all attempts at explanation and classi- fication. Ignorance of the law of evolution natu- rally led to an unintelligent hero-worship which 6 HERBERT SPENCER blinded the intellect to the subtle relations existing between man and his surroundings. Herbert Spencer changed all that. His Principles of Biology fore- shadowed a conception of biography in which the great man would no longer be viewed as an incom- prehensible incarnation of supernatural energy, but as the product of certain interpretable forces. Between the average man and the great man the difference is mainly this — the one remains passive, while the other, as has been already said, reacts upon his environment, thereby unlocking new forces and giving a fresh impetus to progress. In coming to the study of Herbert Spencer, we cannot do better than use for purposes of biographic inter- pretation his own far-reaching principles. Before seeking to understand Spencer the philosopher, it is necessary to understand Spencer the man. A critical estimate can only lay claim to completeness when a picture is given of the philosopher as influenced by his age as well as dominating his age. If the title of great is due to those rare souls who have scaled the heights of human thought, and from the Pisgah summit have pointed the way to intellectual horizons undiscoverable by ordinary mortals, upon the brow of Herbert Spencer must be placed the never-fading wreath of immortality. Herbert Spencer was born at Derby on 27th April 1820. Spencer, like Mill, owed much to his father, EARLY LIFE 7 but the educational methods pursued were very- different indeed. James Mill had an almost fanat- ical belief in education. One of the tenets of the eighteenth-century philosophy was the modifia- bility of human nature, and the value of systematic training. James Mill put his son into training at the earliest possible moment ; and for years subjected him to a severe course of mental disci- pline. The elder Spencer, in his own way as intel- lectually independent as James Mill, took a more rational view of education. He did not deem it the highest wisdom to force children into an artificial groove ; he preferred to trust to the spontaneity of nature. In his view cramming of the memory with bits of detached knowledge was of little value compared with thorough mental individuality. Being a teacher by profession, the elder Speircer was in a position to give full sway to his ideas. To this, and not, as has been supposed, to delicate health, was it that young Spencer was somewhat backward in his early education. He was seven years of age before he could read. In due course the boy was sent to a training day-school, but his progress was not particularly satisfactory. He did not take kindly to the routine Ox school life. He is described as having been restless, inattentive, and by no means pliable. In all lessons in which success depended upon mechanical methods, such 8 HERBERT SPENCER as learning by rote, young Spencer did not show to advantage. Knowledge of the fragmentary kind he did not readily assimilate ; it was only when his ob- serving and reasoning faculties were called into play that intellectual progress was discernible. Nature appealed to him more forcibly than books. Science in his youthful days exercised over him a special charm. One of his favorite occupations is said to have been "the catching and preserving of insects and the rearing of moths and butterflies from eggs through larva and chrysalis to their most developed forms." To his domestic surroundings, more than to his formal school training, the boy was indebted for his mental development. His father and uncles were men of pronounced individualities, bold thinkers on religion, politics, and social questions generally. In the family circle young Spencer heard all the topics of the day discussed with free- dom and boldness. Such an atmosphere was fatal to that hereditary reliance upon authority character- istic of average middle-class homes. Moreover, the boy was early taught to think for himself in matters religious by the example of dissent which he witnessed weekly in his own home. His parents were originally Methodists, but his father had a preference for the Quakers, while his mother re- mained true to the Wesleyan persuasion. On Sun- EARLY LIFE 9 day mornings young Spencer attended the Quakers' meeting with his father, and in the evening he accompanied his mother to the Methodist chapel. Thus early the future pliilosopher had to reckon with the personal equation, the domestic bias in matters theological. There is nothing in Mr. Spencer's writings to show that religion had ever taken vital hold of him, as it did some of his noted contemporaries. Mill has left on record how he grew up outside of religious influences. His father deliberately kept him from contact with religion on its emotional and ceremonial side. In that case Mill's detachment of mind on religious questions was intelligible ; but, in regard to Spencer, the curious thing was that, while moving in the midst of religious influences, he seems to have remained totally unaffected by them. One would have ex- pected to find him, like George Eliot, under the sway of those spiritual ideals and impulses which were inseparably associated with middle-class Evangelicalism in the first half of the century. In conversation I once asked Mr. Spencer if, like George Eliot, he had first accepted the orthodox creed, then doubted, and finally rejected it. His reply was that to him it never appealed. It was not a case of acceptance and rejection : his mind lay outside of it from the first. In many ways both Mill and Spencer would have 10 HERBERT SPENCER found their philosophic influence broadened and deepened had they, in their early days, shared in the spiritual experiences of their contemporaries. Those thinkers who, under the domination of youth- ful enthusiasm, have endeavored to realize super- natural ideals and, under emotional fervor, to strike the note of ascetic sanctity, receive an almost intuitive insight into the deeper religious problems of the age — an insight denied those who come to the study of religious psychology with the foot-rule of the logician and the weighing-scales of the statistician. Many students who have long since broken away from the bonds of orthodoxy, and whose minds now soar into the ampler air of speculative freedom, will be ready to admit that in dealing with religion the minds of both Mill and Spencer work under serious limitations, due to their lack of spiritual receptivity in early days. To this lack of receptivity must be traced the error into which Mr. Spencer fell in his First Principles in supposing that science and religion would find a basis of agreement in recognition of the Unknowable. The terms proposed by science resemble those of the husband who suggested to the wife, as a basis of future harmony, that he should take the inside of the house and she the outside. When young Spencer reached his thirteenth year, the question of his future came up for serious con- EARLY LIFE 11 sideration. It was deemed wise to trust him to the educational care of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, perpetual curate at Hinton, near Bath. The Rev. Mr. Spencer was a Radical in politics, a temperance advocate, an anti-corn law agitator, and an enthusiastic advocate of all measures relating to the welfare of the people — a man, in brief, whose life was shortened by unsparing devotion to ideals which are now recognized as realizable, but which then were treated as the products of a Quixotic mind. The reverend gentleman, himself a dis- tinguished graduate of Cambridge, naturally set himself to qualify his nephew for a university career. His nephew's mind, however, was not cast in the university mould. In his interesting biographic sketch of Herbert Spencer, Professor Hudson sums up very concisely the progress made during this period : " The course of study now pursued was somewhat more regular and definite than had been the case at home ; and the dis- cipline was of a more rigorous character. But save for this the uncle's method and system did not materially differ from those to which young Spencer had been accustomed while under his father's roof. Once again his successes and his failures in the various studies which he now took up were alike significant. In the classic languages to which a portion of his time was daily given very little 12 HERBERT SPENCER progress was made. The boy showed neither taste nor aptitude in this direction; rules and vocabularies proved perpetual stumbling-blocks to him ; and what little was with difficulty committed to memory was almost as soon forgotten. But while for studies of this class there was shown an inaptitude almost astounding, a counterbalancing aptitude was exhibited for studies demanding a different kind of ability — constructive and co-ordinating power rather than a memory for unconnected details. In mathe- matics and mechanics such rapid advancement was made that he soon placed himself in these depart- ments abreast of fellow students much older than himself. What was noticeable, too, was his early habit of laying hold of essential principles, and his ever-growing tendency towards independent analysis and exploration." Close study of his nephew's mind led the Rev. Mr. Spencer to abandon the idea of a university career. It has been represented that his uncle was emphatic upon the necessity of a university training, and only reluctantly gave up the idea in consequence of the nephew's obstinacy ; but I have it on Mr. Spencer's authority that this was not the case. In his own words : "There was no dispute. My uncle gave up the idea when he saw that I was unfit." That is to say, it became clear to the Rev. Mr. Spencer that the mind of his nephew was of a type which could EARLY LIFE 13 not be fitted into the university mould. He saw that it would follow a bent of its own, and would not be forced into conventional channels. Much has been said of the loss which Spencer has sustained through exclusion from the atmosphere and training of university life. In dealing with exceptional minds, whose evolution is pre-determined along original lines by innate capacity and genius, no good purpose is served by appealing to general rules, which from the nature of the case can deal only with the expected and the calculable, not with those out- standing individualities which defy the ordinary laws of averages and probabilities. One drawback certainly was attached to Spencer's exclusion from university life. He was compelled to face not only a hostile public, but the insidious opposition of university cliques, who could not bear to see a new thinker of commanding power step forward into the intellectual arena without the hall-mark of uni- versity culture. Had Spencer been the centre of an admiring group of university disciples his system would have come into vogue much earlier; it would, in other words, have become fashionable. As it was, after the gradual decay of home-made philoso- phies, Hegel became the idol of university circles, and Spencer was left, a voice crying in the wilder- ness. Notwithstanding all this, Spencer gained more than he lost by missing the conventional university 14 HERBERT SPENCER training. However reluctant the Rev. Mr. Spencer was to abandon his deeply-cherished design, he admitted in after years that in following the prompt- ings of nature his nephew had acted wisely. He doubtless saw that the very qualities which unfitted his nephew for the routine of a classical curriculum were precisely the qualities which gave him his great superiority in science and philosophy. A grinding in dead languages and a saturation in old- world methods and ideas might have seriously checked the faculties for observation and massive generalization which, when left to develop naturally, have made their possessor an unrivalled king in quite a new intellectual sphere, in which stand in unique conjunction the widest speculative thought and unparalleled analytic power. The abandonment of the university design led to a period of uncertainty as to young Spencer's future. He returned home. The practical outlook seemed vague and uncertain. In the absence of any well-defined plan, his father secured him an assistantship in a school. The teaching profession was one in which Spencer might well have shone provided the curriculum were framed on a rational and scientific basis. As a teacher he would have found himself out of sympathy with modern systems, and sooner or later his career would have been cut short. One quality invaluable in a teacher he EARLY LIFE 15 possessed in a pre-eminent degree — that of luminous exposition. Those who have had the privilege of conversing with Mr. Spencer have been at once struck with the marvellous lucidity of his handling of the most abstruse topics. Into ordinary con- versation he carries the habits of thought and exposition which other men usually leave behind in the study. There is no pedantry, no formalism: sweep of thought, clearness in statement, fertility of illustration, and lucidity of exposition are wedded to conversational charm. This expository power struck John Stuart Mill forcibly in his first inter- view with Spencer. A friend of Mill once told me of Mill's admiration for Spencer's power of present- ing a full-orbed view of his subject in language at once precise and luminous. It is plain that Spencer would have made an ideal teacher. How- ever, circumstances rather than design cut short his pedagogic career. In the autumn of 1837 young Spencer, whose early bent was towards science, especially on the mathematical and mechanical sides, received and accepted an offer from the resident engineer of the London division of the London and Birmingham railway, then in process of construction. For a year and a half he worked in London as a civil engineer, and subsequently, for two and a half years, ob the Birmingham and Gloucester railway. During this time he showed 16 HERBERT SPENCER his interest in the intellectual side of his profes- sion by contributing several papers to the Civil Engineer Journal, and his inventive faculties found scope in the invention of a little instru- ment called the velocimeter, for calculating the speed of locomotive engines. Again his life- plan was destined to be changed. After eight years at civil engineering, young Spencer was brought face to face with a crisis by the disasters which followed upon the great railway mania. In the reaction which followed, Spencer, with other young men similarly situated, suffered. The demand for new railways fell off, and consequently the de- mand for civil engineers. At the age of twenty-six Spencer had to begin the world afresh. He re- turned to his home in Derby. Meanwhile Spencer's mind had been branching out in other quarters besides civil engineering. He was musing upon political philosophy and science. In 1842 he con- tributed to a paper called The Nonconformist a series of articles on 'The Proper Sphere of Government.' These, after due season, appeared later in pamphlet form. In his home retreat at Derby his mind was still further matured by reading and thinking. Man, however, does not live by thought alone, so it behooved Spencer to turn his attention to the bread and butter side of life. He cast his eyes towards journalism, and after a EARLY LIFE 17 miscellaneous period he was, in 1848, in his own words, "invited to take the position of sub-editor of the Economist newspaper." This post he held till 1853. In London he got his feet on the first rung of the ladder of fame. The history of his long, toil- some, and heroic ascent is mainly the record of the various stages of his mind in the conception and elaboration of that vast system of thought with which his name is imperishably associated. CHAPTER II INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT While engaged in the work of a civil engineer, and before he settled in London, Spencer was quietly pondering over the great intellectual problems of the time. Naturally he was led by his fondness for science to study the highest authorities in the vari- ous departments. At the age of twenty he began to study Lyell's Principles of Creology. Without demur he accepted the development as opposed to the special creation theory of the earth and man, though like the rest of his contemporaries he could not trace the process in its detail, nor understand its natiire. In order to follow the evolution of young Spencer's mind it will be necessary to describe the intellectual environment in which it moved in those early days. The early years of the century were years of great fermentation, theological, philosophic, political, and social. The practical energies of the nation, freed from the great strain of the continental wars, found new outlet in the spheres of commerce and industry. Scientific study of nature, no longer tabooed by theol- 18 INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 19 ogy, demonstrated its utility by an imposing record of inventions and discoveries, whose influence on the national prosperity was at once dramatic and all- embracing. Such a transformation of the industrial and social order could not take place without exert- ing a potent influence upon the higher thought of the time. Science, which in the practical sphere had achieved colossal triumphs, and given man power over nature, could not but be greatly influenced by the new forces which it had called into existence. Science as the worker of miracles became the idol of the hour : at its shrine the popular as well as the cultured intelligence of the day worshipped fer- vently. The printing-press teemed with books for the diffusion of useful knowledge, while to the more highly cultured the British Association, established in the first half of the century, proved itself a veri- table Mecca. The union between science and in- dustry had one effect — discoveries, inventions, and theories came pell mell, to the utter confusion of the methodical thinker, with his desire to reduce his intellectual knowledge to something like order. In the whirl of practical details, thought in the wide and comprehensive sense was paralyzed ; the wood could not be seen for the trees. In the midst of the jubilation over the advance of discovery, in the midst of the eulogiums over the material victories which Science had brought in its train, there were those 20 HERBERT SPENCER who remembered that man does not live by facts alone, those who are ever ready to string facts on the thread of philosophic or scientific generalizations. Since the days of Bacon and his Novum Organum, thinkers have cherished the ambition to discover knowledge by the slow but sure methods of science, and to weave that knowledge into one comprehensive whole. It soon became evident that a new theory of man and his relation to the Universe was following in the wake of science and its discoveries. In Scotland, the theological spirit, much as it wished, could not prevent the reading public from being influenced by such books as Combe's Constitution of Man, and the famous Vestiges of Creation. On the Continent the same spirit of scientific inquiry and theorizing was abroad. This desire of science not to remain con- tent with looking upon nature as a huge museum in which the highest aim was duly to ticket and label phenomena, found expression in Humboldt's Cosmos, which appeared in 1845. About the same time appeared Whewell's History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, which was intended to be the continuation of the work of Bacon "renovated ac- cording to our advanced intellectual position and office." A thinker of the type of Whewell labors under one distinct disadvantage — while he is en- gaged upon ultimate generalizations, discoveries are INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 21 being made which may knock away the foundation of his entire cosmical structure. This was precisely the fate of Whewell. As Merz says in his valuable work on European Thought : " In the year 1857, the date of the publication of the latest editions of Whew- ell's works, nothing was popularly known of energy, its conservation and dissipation, nothing of the varia- tion of species and the evolution of organic forms, nothing of the mechanical theory of heat or that of gases, of absolute measurements and absolute tem- perature ; even the cellular theory seems to have been popular only in Germany. And yet all the problems denoted by these now popular terms were then occupying, or had for many years occupied, the attention of the leading thinkers of that period. But we find no mention of them in Whewell's Works." Still, Whewell did great service to the cause of sci- entific thought. His was a bold attempt to reduce to something like coherence the confused mass of scientific knowledge. Underlying the book was the idea of the organic unity of the sciences ; and if he failed to realize his ideal, the reason lay not in his lack of insight, but in the fact that scientists had not then discovered by observation and experiment the marvellous unity of nature. The next great impetus to scientific thought came from Comte. In the history of scientific thought the name of Auguste Comte will always occupy an hon- 22 HERBERT SPENCER ored place. It is customary to belittle Comte on account of his vagaries in connection with the Reli- gion of Humanity, but we must not allow his failings to blind us to the great work he did in the sphere of scientific thought. Science, as has been pointed out, had a bewildering effect upon the average mind. Along with the material blessings which came in its train. Science had incidentally come forward as a rival to Theology, as an interpreter of Man and the Universe. In the minds of many people, even thinkers of the caliber of Faraday, the theological and scientific conceptions lived comfortably side by side. But studious readers of the signs of the times had come to the conclusion that Theology and Sci- ence were deadly rivals, yet perplexity existed as to how they were related in the history of thought and speculation. It was the merit of Comte to attempt to show the position which Theology, Metaphysics, and Science hold in the progress of humanity. Whether or not we agree with his famous law of the three stages, this, at least, must be conceded — Comte by his law has rendered luminous a large tract of history which, in the hands of the average histo- rian, had been a perfect maze. In a rough sort of way we do get a fruitful view of human progress when we say with Comte that Theology failed in its interpretation of the Universe, because it busied itself with personal causes, while Metaphysics also went INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 23 wide of the mark because it dealt in entities, whereas Science has been fruitful in so far as it has confined itself to the study of phenomena on the lines of observation and experiment. In the purely scientific sphere, Comte did great service in his efforts to show that progress does not take place at haphazard, as a superficial student of the history of discoveries and inventions is apt to think, but that through the seemingly aimless growth of science there is trace- able a definite law. Before Comte the various sci- ences were treated as so many distinct branches of man's knowledge of nature. Any classification which existed was of an artificial kind. For this Comte substituted a classification which had the note of organic unity. The sciences, according to him, are six in number : Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology. The merit claimed for this arrangement by Comte is that the order of their classification is the order in which the sciences have been evolved — the order in which they have passed from the theological or metaphysical into the scientific stage. If we wish to learn how far scientific conceptions are gaining ground, we have a fairly reliable method if we apply the Comtean classi- fication. In Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics, the scientific method pure and simple has long held sway. It is not, however, long since Chemistry and Biology were at the metaphysical stage, with its 24 HERBERT SPENCER " vital principle " and such like entities, while in the region of Sociology prayers for success of war, for industrial prosperity, etc., show unmistakable signs of the theological stage. Valuable as was the work of Comte, it was vitiated by one great defect. In his antipathy to the study of causes, he was led to confuse two things which are quite distinct — final or theological, and efficient or mechanical cause. The result of this was that he refused to trace his six sciences to a common root. All attempts to get behind phenomena, even to the subtle laws and forces which seemed to be the key to phenomena, were ruthlessly opposed by Comte. As Ward, an American writer, puts it : " Among the most lamented of Comte's vagaries is his uncompromising hostility to all the modern hypotheses respecting the nature of light, heat, electricity, etc. He classed all these along with gravitation, and declared that all the efforts expended in the vain search after origin, nature, or cause were simply squandered. These agencies, according to him, were merely phenomena, and were to be studied only as such. The imaginary interstellar ether was an ontological conception or a metaphysical entity to be classed along with phlogis- ton and all the spirits of the laborator)^ and the imag- inary occupants of the bodies of men, animals, and inanimate objects. The undulatory theory of light was no better than the emission theory, and both INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 25 equally vain attempts to know what from the nature of things cannot be known. In fact, the domain of the unknowable in Comte's philosophy was enormous in its extent, and when we contemplate the little that was left for man to do we almost wonder how he should have regarded it worth the labor of writing so large a work. The amount of mischief which this one glaring fallacy accomplished for Comte's system of Positivism, insinuating itself into every chapter, and more or less vitiating the real truths contained in the work, was so great as to give considerable color to the claim that pure Comtism, if it could be made to prevail and exert its legitimate influence upon human inquiry in the future, would so far crip- ple every department of science as to throw it back into mediaeval stagnation. For it would strike a fatal blow at all true progress in human knowledge by crushing out the very spirit of inquiry, and would quench all interest in phenomena themselves by pro- hibiting the search after the springs and sources — the causes — of the phenomena which furnish the true life and soul of scientific research." Comte failed to realize his ideal, for a reason which explains the slow progress that has hitherto been made in the great task of formulating a scientific philosophy of the Universe. For this two things are needed — • vast accumulation of facts and great synthetic power. A scientist with nothing but a 26 HERBERT SPENCER passion for facts is simply an intellectual hodman, whose relation to the philosophical scientist is that of a bricklayer's laborer to the architect. On the other hand, great speculative power working upon imper- fect knowledge leads often to sheer absurdity. Wit- ness Germany with its natural philosophy. The ideal condition is one in which fact and theory go hand-in-hand. Comte came as near as was possible in his day to providing a scientific key to Nature. All that was needed was for Comte to discover and formulate the law of unity, which, like a golden thread, runs through his six sciences. For logical purposes, it is necessary to treat the various sciences as if they stood for separate independent classes of facts in Nature, but the discoveries which were tak- ing place just at the close of Comte's career substi- tuted the dynamic for the statical conception of Nature. Herbert Spencer profited by the new con- ception of Nature of which Comte was unable to take advantage. From the point of view of the scientific thinker, the dominating fact of the century may be defined as a new conception of Nature. Until Spencer began to write, the conception of Nature was that of a colossal machine, the various parts of which were specially manufactured to fit into their respec- tive places. Unity, of course, there was, but the tmity was in the mind of the Supernatural Mechanic, not in the material of which the machine was con- INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 27 structed. Alike in the works of scientists and theo- logians of the early century ,