HERBERT SPENCER.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9325, 28 January 1896, Page 2

HERBERT SPENCER.

His Life Described by One Who Knows Him. An extremely interesting character sketch of Herbert Spencer appeal's iv the November Review of Reviews. Hera are some extracts :— Herbert Spencer belongs to the great generation of thinkei-s and writers of whom but a few last survivors still remain among us. Twenty years younger than the century, five years younger than the thunders of Waterloo, he was born at Derby in 1820, of a cultivated and sciontifically-minded ancestry. Tims, place, and circumstances were all significant. As regards dato, he belongs to tho first race of evolutionary giants. Darwin was just eleven years his senior 5 Hooker and Lewes arrived three years before him on the scene; while Wallace and Huxley were respectively two and five years his juniors. Roughly speaking, therefore, he was well in the mid-line of the coming van of evolutionary thinkers, abreast of the full tide that was to lead on in time to that momentous change in men' 3 conceptions of the universe. As regards place, once more, he was an Englishman of the Midlands; and England, we may recollect with pride, has led the advance throughout in this evolutionary movement, Moreover, just then was the day of the Midlands.' Earlier, thought and literature had had thoir home for the most part in the south, round Thames and Cam ; later, they have bpgnn to fix their seat in the north, frotn Mersey and Humber to the foot of the Scotch | Highlands. But in the forties, fifties, and sixties, the days of Sponfier'e prime, the Midlands led the Very vanguard of the movement in England. Darwin was a Shrewsbury man, Spencer cams from Derby," George Eliot'was of Warwickshire. Nor is it a point- to be overlooked that Mr Spencer was descended from a Nonconformist liouso, like George Eliot and Bright j his father was a Wcsleyan. All these antecedents helped to give direction to hie peculiar genius. A rebel and a dissenter, the prophet of the mixed influences of heredity and environment, he is himself a conspicuous and striking instance of the practical working of his own theories.

Hγ Spencer, the father, was a schoolmaster and secretary of the Philosophical Society at Derby. He had a taate for science, and he imbued his son early with a genuine love of * natural his tory. Jlore than that, however, though not himself averse to the ordinary j belief in supernatural causes, ho taught the j boy to search as far as possible for natural j causes of all phenomena that fell under his notice. Froni the very beginning Herbert, Spencer's training woa almost exclusively j scientific. For languages he had no taste; ; and, born insurgent that ho is, he rose, up | with all his soul against ths conventional j despotism of Greek and Latin. Fortunately ho had a wise and judicious father, who did , not insist on warping his mind clean away , from its true bent by doses of grammar, and the consequence is that at the present moment our great philosopher—learned in all the learning of the sun, star and planet, bird, boast and fish, the mind of man, the growth of human societiea—does not even read the letters of the Greek alphabet. Yet see how vain is the argument usually adduced for our common and exclusively linguistic education that it teaches men how to use .aright their own language. No modern writer employs the English tongue with greater precision and logical accuracy than Mr Spencer; no other coins new words of classical origin, wherever they are needed to express his ideas, with greater freedom or with greater effectiveness. The diotionary bristles to-day with learned neologisms of Greek descent which we owe to the man who rofused to learn the classical languages. I cannot remember that any one of them sjns against the strictest laws of Hellenic wordbuilding.

Young Spencer was mainly brought up ip the neighbourhood of Bath by an uncle who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and rector of Hinton Charterhouse. Here hie scientific leanings were encouraged especially in the direction of mathematics, and his faculty ct observation was developed by careful training. To Cambridge, however, he would not go; hie lade of Greek made a university coarse, as things then stood, an absolute impossibility. It was necessary find him a profession, and at that time of day civil engineering was almost the only profession open to a man who declined the classics. So at seventeen Herbert Spencer was sent to learn the work of a railway engineer, under Sir Charles Fox, the builder in later days (unless I mistake) of the Crystal Palaoe. That was in 1837, during the heroic age of railway enterprise in England, and Mr Spencer was employed on the Gloucester and Birmingham railway, a line now merged in the existing Midland.

The young man's heart, however, was not in engineering:—"lt would be hard to say how early he began to regard himself as the predestined reorganiser of science and philosophy; certainly from the very first dawn of adult life ins disposition led him towards the highest reconstructive and generalising work—to gee his own pregnant phrase* 'the unification of knowledge.'"

His first important work—" Social Statics'* —was published in 1050, when ho was jusb thirty. The great work of his life—the "System of Synthetic Philosophy"— -tf&B I taken Up in earnest ten years later.

I The sacrifices involved in the preparation and production .of the gigantic work were little short of heroic. Those who know Mi , Spencer by his books alone may li&Ve thought of him merely as devoting hhnsoli Jto philosophy out of tho abundance of Ids I material and comfort. Tho truth is for otherwise. No man over lived a more asoetlfl life, or denied himself more for tho sake of the task he had..undertaken for humanity, In hio evidence given before tho Commissior. on Copyright he tells us in plain words, though in the most sovorely impersonal and abstract manner, the story of his hard and noble fight during tho unrecognised days 0! his early manhood. Not a fight for bread, not a fight for fame* romombor, but a fight for truth. For his , first book, "Sooial - Statics," in 1859, he could not find a publisher willing to take any risk; so htf Was obliged to print it at his own cost* and sell it on commission. The edition consisted of only 750 copies, and it took no 1 less than 14 years to sell. Such are the • rewards of sorioua thought in our genera* tiofl I Five years later he printed the original form of the " Principles of Psyohology." Again no publisher would undertake the risk, and lie published on commission. Once more 750 copies woro printout afld the sale was very slow. "I gave away a considerable number," says Mr Spenoer pathetically; and the remainder sold In twelve and'"α-fialf years." During all that time, we may conclude from tho soquol, he not only made nothing put of thoso two im« portant and valuable books, but was aotually kept out of pocket for his capital Bunk in them, "Boforo the initial volume, 'First Principles, , was finished," ho observes, "1 found myself stiE losing. During tho issue of tho second volume, tho ' Principles of Biology,'l Was still losing. In tho middle of the third volumn I was losing so much that I found I was frittering away all I. possessed. I went back upon my accounts, and discovered that in the course of lGyeaift I had lost nearly £I,2oo—adding interest' more than £1,200. As I was evidently going ' on ruining myaalf, I issued to the subscribers . a notice of cessation." . ~. •

lie had been living, meanwhile, in " the most economical way possible," in spite of which he found he had trenched to a great extent on his very small capital. Spartan , - fare had not sufficed to make his experiment ,_ successful. Nevertheless ho continued to ~] publish, as he himself bravely phrases it,,. , 1 jf may 3ay, by accident." Twice before in the .-. course of those fifteen weary years ho had.; j been able to persevere, in. spite of losses, by • bequests of money. On this third occasion, . just as he was on the very point of die- /■; continuing the production of his great wor)t» property which he inherited camo to him Iβ ,-_', the nick of time to prevent such a catas--., trophe. Any other man in the world would ', have invested his money and fought ehy in .' future of the siren of philosophy. Not, so Mr Spencer. To him life is thought. He went courageously on with hie" forlorn hope in publishing, and it W" some consolation to know that he WM repaid in the end, though late and ill, for hii i single-minded devotion. In twenty-four . years after he began to publish he hap< retrieved his position, and was abreast of his losses. Think of that you men of busin«3Sk Twenty-four years of hard mental work for no pay at all, and at the end of it to find yourself just where you started ! Since that time*, it is true, Mr Spencer's works have brought him in, by degrees, a satisfactory revenue; but consider the pluck and determination of the man who could fight so long, in epitfl of • poverty, against such terrible experiences. •