APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



FEBRTTARY, 1897. 



HERBERT SPENCER: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 



By WILLIAM HENEY HUDSON, 



PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 



IN a famous passage in his autobiography, Edward Gibbon has 

 told us of the mingled emotions with which, on a memorable 

 night in June, 1787, he penned the last lines of the last page of 

 his History, and thus closed the undertaking of many laborious 

 years. In a somewhat similar, though at once more dignified 

 and more touching strain, Mr. Spencer, in the preface to his re- 

 cently published third volume of the Principles of Sociology, 

 has set on record his feelings on reviewing his finished life-work 

 a work beside which even the vast enterprise of Gibbon sinks 

 into insignficance : " Doubtless in earlier years some exultation 

 would have resulted ; but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and 

 now my chief pleasure is in my emancipation. Still, there is 

 satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, discouragements, and 

 shattered health have not prevented me from fulfilling the pur- 

 pose of my life." 



The Synthetic Philosophy, then, is to-day an accomplished 

 fact. When Mr. Spencer first entered upon his work, he esti- 

 mated that it would commit him to at least twenty years of reg- 

 ular and persistent toil, allowing two years to each of the ten 

 stout volumes called for by his plan. Reckoning from the pub- 

 lication of the initial installment of First Principles in October, 

 1860, it has actually occupied just thirty-six years. Commenced 

 with little encouragement from the cultured world, and even 

 against the more cautious judgment of immediate advisers, at a 

 time when its author was already broken down in health, with 

 uncertain financial outlook and narrowly limited working powers, 



TOL. L, 33 



