/t!**^ yoF 0003 /S°^C«, «Ss ??a ^55t Class K ! i? ^ Book ^ • Uj.^.^v^ HERBERT SPENCER" ON THE AMERICANS Ain> THE AMERICANS Olf HERBERT SPENCER. BEING A FULL REPOUT OF HIS INTERVIEW, AND OF THE PROCEEDINGS AT THE FAREWELL BANQUET OF NOY. 9, 1882. NEW EDITION-VtlTH APPENDIX. NEW YORK: TON AND 1, 8, AND 5 BOND STKEET. 1884. ^ D' OOPTKIGHT BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1882. lu Exchange Yale Univ. I*i^' 18 lit ^^^ CONTENTS Pkefaoe .... Eeport of Me. Spencer's Interview Proceedings of the Spencer Banquet THE SPEECHES. Mr. Evarts's Remarks Mr. Spencer's Address Professor Sumner's Speech Remarks of Mr. Schurz Address of Professor Marsh Mr. Fiske's Speech Mr. Beecher's Remarks . UmPOKE^^ SPEECHES. What Mr. Youmans did not sat What Mr. Ward was ready to say What Mr. Leland got no Chance to say LETTERS. Letter from Dr. Holmes President White President Barnard R. Heber Newton . J. B. Stallo George M. Dayie . Daniel Greenleaf Thompson Fred. W. Hinrichs. W. D. Le Sueur Wilmot L. Warren Hugh McCulloch . , PAGE 5 9 21 25 28 35 40 45 50 58 67 76 80 84 85 86 87 88 89 89 91 93 95 95 TO HEEBERT SPENCER. The kingdom of thy thought is time and space. Thy logic binds together mote and star. To thee the worm and the archangel are But less and greater of evolyent grace. Thou dost not speak of the Almighty's face, Seeing that mortal language can hut mar The faith which, traveling infinitely far, In the Unknowable finds resting-place. The Force Inscrutable wherein the round Of interwoven universes breathes. Is all of God thy converts learn of thee ; And yet thy brow is eloquently crowned With honor lordlier than the laurel wreathes. In the proud peace of wise humility. A. E. Lancaster. PEEFAOE. "^V;? Me. Herbert Spencer arrived in New York bj the Cunarder Servia, August 21st, and sailed for Liverpool in the White Star steamship Germanic November 11th, having spent nearly three months in the United States. It was his hope to stay longer and travel more, going at least as far West as Chicago ; but it soon became evident that he could neither remain as long as he wished, nor meet the many friends who awaited him even in the places he visited. Mr. Spencer had long desired to visit this country, but had resisted all solicitations to undertake the trip, in consequence of his bad health, which he feared would be made worse, both by the Atlantic voyages and by the social excitement to which he might be exposed. But he was so urgently persuaded, and so constantly assured that it would be the best thing for him, that he at length allowed his inclinations to get the better of his fears, and decided to make the trial. When Mr. Spencer sailed for this country he was a good deal run down, and, instead of helping him, the voyage only aggravated his bad symptoms. The distress of his life, for the last twenty- seven years, has been insomnia. He slept but little on the ship, and on landing was in so low a nervous state that the excitement of ordinary conversation was too much for him. His friends were anxious to pay their respects to him, but he was compelled to seek seclusion, in which he hoped soon to recover suflScient strength to make moderate social intercourse possible and enjoyable. But in this he was disappointed. He long thought it would be impos- sible for him to accept the invitation to a farewell banquet; and it was only a short time before he sailed that, having re- 6 PREFACE. cruited a little from better sleep, he consented to the arrangement. Mr. Spencer at first improved at Newport, and hoped that he might have a few days of strength to enjoy New York before leaving. But he was again disappointed, as is shown by the fol- lowing extract from a letter of November 4th : " I went wrong agam at Boston, and my head has been since quite as much disordered as at any time since my arrival. I stay here until Wednesday, because it is absolutely needful to shun all excitements save that of the dinner itself. I must peremptorily decline committing myself to anything else. I am sorry to dis- appoint you and others; but, even as it is, I look forward with some alarm to the state of brain with which I shall start on my return voyage." It is thus apparent how serious an invalid our visitor was, how reasonable were his apprehensions of the effect of an excur- sion to this country, and how imperative was the necessity that he should maintain the utmost privacy while here. In fact, very soon after his arrival his chief solicitude was to recover vigor enough to get home again. Many of Mr. Spencer's friends all over the country were sorely disappointed at not being able to meet him, to shake hands with him, and expi*ess to liim their admiration and their gratitude, but it is to be hoped they will recognize that his disabilities were such as to make this wholly impossible. The reference that it has been felt needful here to make to Mr. Spencer's state of health leads to a further consideration in relation to it. Having previously animadverted upon pohtical questions, when interviewed, in his farewell remarks at the dinner he thought proper to address himself to a topic of more social and personal interest. Mr. Spencer is not practiced in the arts of after-dinner speech-making, and he was certainly in no condition to trust himself to impromptu remarks suitable to a festive oc- casion. He had but one opportunity to address the American people ; and it was not the quality of the man to indulge in the strain of vulgar flattery that too many of his countrymen find available in their intercourse with Americans. He therefore chose to be true to himself as a sincere friend of our people, and to offer some suggestions which it seemed desirable for them to ponder. As a life-long student of social progress, he did not PREFACE. 7 think Arnerican society had reached the final stage of that prog- ress — and he said so. He thought the great ideal of American life — action, enterprise, work — neither a permanent nor the highest ideal of human society. The law of evolution, which has brought us up to this from a much lower condition, must carry us on still further. Work is but a means, and the highest objects of life are defeated when it is made an end. Wliere work becomes such a passion as to be pursued without regard to what it is for, or as a means of varied and cultivated enjoyment, it must run into such excesses as to be widely and seriously injurious. He pointed out various of its evil consequences, and thought that what we most want is to give greater attention to those higher uses and ends of life to which work is tributary. The theme was wisely selected ; Mr. Spencer could have employed the occasion for no better pur- pose than to set the people to thinking how they are cheated out of the best that life can give by the mere craze and infatuation for working and learning. What Mr. Spencer said at the banquet has been received by nearly everybody in the best spirit, as wholesome truth that should be taken to heart. But some have thought it incongru- ous that a chronic invalid — ^himself a victim of overwork — should venture to talk to a robust and irrepressible people about the effects of overwork. Mr. Spencer may possibly have thought that experience counts for something in a matter of this kind ; but he treated the subject generally and impersonally, and said nothing about himself. Had he, however, seen fit to refer to him- self, there would have been tenfold strength in his case. He broke down completely from excessive overwork in 1855, and since that time has not known what it is to have a night of sound, refresh- ing sleep. And yet the magnitude of his labors during that period is to-day the astonishment of the world. And how has he ac- complished so great an amount of difficult work ? Simply by a devout observance of the requirements of his own gospel of re- laxation. He has showed us, as no man ever before showed, what power of work comes out of the pleasure of cultivated amuse- ments. His recreations have been systematic — concerts, operas, theatres, billiards, salmon-fishing, yachting, city rambles, and coun- try excursions ; and it has been his fixed rule, when work grew burdensome, to strike his tasks abruptly and go away for pleas- 3 PREFACE. . ure, and amuse himself till work again became itself attractive 1 and enjoyable. Mr. Spencer's suggestions to the American people, that their intense passion for work is a mistake, were made on the basis of what he had observed of our characteristics, and what he knew of social tendencies ; but he might have abundantly re-enforced his view from the depths of his own experience, both with regard to the evils of overwork and the wonderful efficacy of recreation to diminish those evils. It is impossible, therefore, to break the force of his admonitions by any imputation of inconsistency. The proceedings of the banquet were very significant. That which has made possible the demonstration described in these pages can hardly fail to check much of the vicious criticism with which Mr. Spencer has been hitherto assailed. An excellent un- derstanding has grown up between him and our people, which began years ago, and has led at last to this cordial public expres- sion. He never dedicated but one work (the " Descriptive Soci- ology"), and that was as follows : "To MY Ameeioan friends, in- eecognition of the en- couragement I have received from their early-shown and LONG-CONTINUED INTEREST IN MY WORKS." And the American people have returned the compliment by- purchasing more than a hundred thousand of his books, reprinted in this country, and upon every volume of which he has been paid as if he had been an American author. No thanks to the American Government, however, which is alone among all civilized nations in refusing to recognize Herbert Spencer's right of property in the works into which he has put the labor of a life-time. E. L. Y. EEPOET OF MR. SPENCER'S INTERVIEW. The following report of an interview with Mr. Spen- cer appeared in several New York newspapers on the morning of October 20, 1882 : Hearing that Herbert Spencer had returned to New York in a somewhat improved condition of health, an intimate American friend obtained his consent to be ques- tioned regarding his impressions of this country, to the following effect : " I believe, Mr. Spencer, that you have not been inter- viewed since your arrival in this country ? " "I have not. The statements in the newspapers im- plying personal intercourse are unauthorized, and many of them incorrect. It was said, for example, that I was ill from the effects of the voyage ; the truth being that I suffered no inconvenience whatever, save that arising from disturbed rest. Subsequent accounts of me in re- spect of disorders, diet, dress, habits, etc., have been equally wide of the mark." "Have these misrepresentations been annoying to you ? " " In some measure, though I am not very sensitive ; but I have been chiefly annoyed by statements which 10 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. affect, not myself only, but others. For some ten days or more there went on reappearing in various journals an alleged opinion of mine concerning Mr. Oscar Wilde. The statement that I had uttered it was absolutely base- less. I have expressed no opinion whatever concerning Mr. Oscar Wilde. Naturally, those who put in circula- tion fictions of this kind may be expected to mix much fiction with what fact they report." " Might not this misrepresentation have been avoided by admitting interviewers ? " " Possibly ; but, in the first place, I have not been sufficiently well ; and, in the second place, I am averse to the system. To have to submit to cross-examination, / under penalty of having ill-natured things said if one re- ^yr I fuses, is an invasion of personal liberty which I dislike. Moreover, there is implied what seems to me an undue love of personalities. Your journals recall a witticism of the poet Heine, who said that, * when a woman writes a novel, she has one eye on the paper and the other on some man — except the Countess Hahn-hahn, who has only one eye.' In like manner, it seems to me that, in the political I discussions that fill your papers, everything is treated in i connection with the doings of individuals — some candi- date for office, or some *boss' or wire-puller. I think it not improbable that this appetite for personalities, among other evils, generates this recklessness of statement. The appetite must be ministered to ; and, in the eagerness to satisfy its cravings, there comes less and less care respect- ing the correctness of what is said." "Has what you have seen answered your expecta- tions ? " " It has far exceeded them. Such books about Amer- ica as I had looked into had given me no adequate idea of the immense developments of material civilization which I have everywhere found. The extent, wealth, and MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. H magnificence of your cities, and especially the splendor of New York, have altogether astonished me. Though I have not visited the wonder of the West, Chicago, yet some of your minor modern places, such as Cleveland, have sufficiently amazed me, by the marvelous results of one generation's activity. Occasionally, when I have been in places of some ten thousand inhabitants, where the telephone is in general use, I have felt somewhat ashamed of our own unenterprising towns ; many of which, of fifty thousand inhabitants and more, make no use of it." "I suppose you recognize in these results the great benefit of free institutions ? " " Ah, now comes one of the inconveniences of inter- viewing. I have been in the country less than two months ; have seen but a relatively small part of it, and but comparatively few people ; and yet you wish from me a definite opinion on a difficult question." "Perhaps you will answer, subject to the qualification that you are but giving your first impressions ? " " Well, with that understanding, I may reply that, though free institutions have been partly the cause, I think they have not been the chief cause. In the first * place, the American people have come into possession of ; an unparalleled fortune — the mineral wealth, and the vast tracts of virgin soil producing abundantly with small cost of culture. Manifestly that alone goes a long way toward producing this enormous prosperity. Then they have profited by inheriting all the arts, appliances, methods, developed by older societies, while leaving behind the ob- structions existing in thetn. They have been able to pick and choose from the products of all past experience ; ap- propriating the good and rejecting the bad. Then, be- sides these favors of fortune, there are factors proper to themselves. I perceive in American faces generally, a ^i-J 12 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. great amount of determination — a kind of * do or die ' ex- pression ; and this trait of character, joined with a power of work exceeding that of any other people, of course produces an unparalleled rapidity of progress. Once more, there is the inventiveness, which, stimulated by the need for economizing labor, has been so wisely fostered. Among us in England, there are many foolish people who, while thinking that a man who toils with his hands has an equitable claim to the product, and, if he has special skill, may rightly have the advantage of it, also hold that if a man toils with his brain, perhaps for years, and, unit- ing genius with perseverance, evolves some valuable in- vention, the public may rightly claim the benefit. The Americans have been more far-seeing. The enormous museum of patents which I saw at Washington is signifi- cant of the attention paid to inventors' claims ; and the nation profits immensely from having, in this direction (though not in all others), recognized property in mental products. Beyond question, in respect of mechanical ap- pliances, the Americans are ahead of all nations. If, along with your material progress, there went equal progress of a higher kind, there would remain nothing to be wished." " That is an ambiguous qualification. What do you mean by it ? " "You will understand when I tell you what I was thinking of the other day. After pondering over what I have seen of your vast manufacturing and trading estab- lishments, the rush of traffic in your street-cars and ele- vated railways, your gigantic hotels and Fifth Avenue palaces, I was suddenly reminded of the Italian repub- lics of the middle ages ; and recalled the fact that, while there was growing up in them great commercial activity, a development of the arts which made them the envy of Europe, and a building of princely mansions which con- n MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 13 tinue to be the admiration of travelers, their people were gradually losing their freedom." " Do you mean this as a suggestion that we are doing the like ? " " It seems to me that you are. You retain the forms of freedom, but, so far as I can gather, there has been a considerable loss of the substance. It is true that those who rule you do not do it by means of retainers armed with swords ; but they do it through regiments of men armed with voting-papers, who obey the word of com- mand as loyally as did the dependents of the old feudal nobles, and who thus enable their leaders to override the general will and make the community submit to their ex- actions as effectually as their prototypes of old. It is doubtless true that each of your citizens votes for the candidate he chooses for this or that oiRce, from Presi- dent downward, but his hand is guided by a power be- hind, which leaves him scarcely any choice. * Use your political power as we tell you, or else throw it away,' is the alternative offered to the citizen. The political ma- chinery as it is now worked has little resemblance to that contemplated at the outset of your political life. Mani- festly, those who framed your constitution never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by a * boss.' America exemplifies, at the other end of the social scale, a change analogous to that which has taken place under sundry despotisms. You know that in Japan, before the recent revolution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun. Here it seems to me that the * sovereign people' is fast becoming a puppet which moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine." " Then you think that republican institutions are a failure." " By no means ! I imply no such conclusion. Thirty 14 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. years ago, when often discussing politics with an English friend, and defending republican institutions, as I always have done and do still, and when he urged against me the ill-working of such institutions over here, I habit- ually replied that the Americans got their form of gov- ■ ernment by a happy accident, not by normal progress, i and that they would have to go back before they could go forward. What has since happened seems to me to have justified that view ; and what I see now confirms me in it. America is showing, on a larger scale than ever before, that * paper constitutions' will not work as \ they are intended to work. The truth, first recognized ^by Macintosh, that * constitutions are not made, but grow,' which is part of the larger truth that societies throughout their whole organizations are not made but grow, at once, when accepted, disposes of the notion that you can work, as you hope, any artificially-devised system of government. It becomes an inference that if your political structure has I been manufactured, and not grown, it will forthwith begin '; to grow into something different from that intended — 1 something in harmony with the natures of citizens and I the conditions under which the society exists. And it evi- dently has been so with you. Within the forms of your constitution there has grown up this organization of pro- fessional politicians, altogether uncontemplated at the outset, which has become in large measure the ruling power." " But will not education and the diffusion of political knowledge fit men for free institutions ? " ( "No. It is essentially a question of character, and i only in a secondary degree a question of knowledge. But for the universal delusion about education as a panacea for political evils, this would have been made sufiiciently clear by the evidence daily disclosed in your papers. Are not the men who officer and control your Federal, State, MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 15 and municipal organizations — who manipulate your cau- cuses and conventions, and run your partisan campaigns — all educated men ? and has their education prevented them from engaging in, or permitting, or condoning, the briberies, lobbyings, and other corrupt methods which vitiate the actions of your administrations? Perhaps party newspapers exaggerate these things ; but what am I to make of the testimony of your civil-service reformers — men of all parties ? If I understand the matter aright, they are attacking, as vicious and dangerous, a system which has grown up under the natural spontaneous work- ing of your free institutions — are exposing vices which education has proved powerless to prevent." "Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous men will secure the offices, and education will aid them in their selfish purposes ; but would not those purposes be thwart- ed, and better government secured, by raising the stand- ard of knowledge among the people at large ? " " Very little. The current theory is that if the young