HERBERT SPENCER

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5199, 13 February 1904, Page 11

HERBERT SPENCER

SOMETHING ABOUT HIS PHILOSOPHY.

Concerning l the late Herbert Spencer the London “Times" writes ; Mr. Spenoeir was* unmarried, and lived in London in comparative retirement till his health forced him to spend most of his time at Brighton. It was his custom, as fax as healrn permitted, to devote the forenoon regularly to work. In th© afternoon he might generally be seen at the Athenaeum- v*ub. lie was very fond or a game of billiards, and his recreation there often tci>k that form. A pleasing anecdote in the recent "Life'' of Dr. Martincau records that on one occasion when the two had' chanced to meet the Athenaeum and had been discussing for some time, Mr. Spencer closed the argument by saying, “i\ow. Hr. Martineau, let us drop philosophy and try our hands at a gaan-e of biillavds." It is probably owing to Mr. Spencer's, entirely extra academic training that there are comparatively few points of contact between him and the thinkers of tha past, no i*s tar from being, in the usual sense of the term; a learned philosopher, and his attitude towards the past has sometimes a good deal of the stubborn independence and selt-contictenco which ’ve usually associate with the self-made man. It is certain that his seminal ideas we- 3 almost all derived; by him from Ins scientific studies, which were wide and thorough, and the biological conception of the organism as a little world of mutually interacting parts, reciprocally conditioning one another, was • especially of profound influence upon his thought. Mr. Spencers sympathetic tendencies have the root hero, andj in the cognate idea of development which, as will be seen, he engrafted upon it. It may probably be said with truth, that it is the constant presence of his conception of an organic whole that chiefly differentiates him from the majority of preceding English. thinkers. It is the more remarkable, therefore, that in his theory of Government and of the State Mr. Spencer casts the conoeptipn entirely to the winds, and propounds an Individualism so bold andl a laissezrlairo so extreme as to have earned from 1 rofessor Huxley that appropriate title of Administrative Nihilism. Practically oppjrtuhe as his recent championship of this cause was there seems, a complete solution of continuity between Mr Spencer's opinions hero and’ the general principles that underlie his thought. _ The essence of evolution, according to Mr. Spencer's well-known definition, consists in a change! from an indefinite anti homogenous state to one that is definite and heterogenous. The instability of the homogenous and the multiplication of yho effects of any force (in accordance with the law of the conservation ot • energy;

explain the ceaseless process of the universe towards a state of more perfect equilibrium. This is, in the widest sense-, what is meant by evolution; and the goal of tho process is a condition of perfect equilibration which becomes in turn the starting-point of a corresponding of dissolution or disintegration. Within those alternating cycles tiio history of the universe is contained.

Such stated in its simplest terms of matter and motion is tho nature of the law' which Mr Spencer discerns os this governing principle of all change. In biology tho continuous scJi’-adju foment of .rite organism to its environment, and the progressive differentiation of function which accompanies tbit* adjustment are but expressions of the universal tendency towards a more perfect equilibrium. In psychology tho evolution of consciousness jsr treated as an extension of the same biological process. The social evolution which h-stofy records is once more tho same .•gradual process of man’s adaptation to his environment, and the science of ethics is tho study of the conditions of that complete adjustment in which hiinuui happiness lies. Mr. iSp&noer, as is well known, com* piloted his evolutionary thepry of ilia knowablo or phenomenal world by the. doctrine of an. unknown and unknowable reality, of which all thalt we know is manifestation. This theory, b> which the name of agnosticism has been applied, os well os the arguments by which it is supX>orieu, seems to b© mainly due to the influence of Hamilton, and through Hamilton of certain aspects of the Kautiaiv doctrine. Mr. Spencer her© leaves sciontilic and enters tho metaphysical arenas His position has been vigorously assailed from a variety of standpoints, and it certainly seems to involve him in inconsistencies of thought}, whilo tho conciliation of religion and! science which it is intended' to offor will bo generally felt to ba inadequate.