HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 435 



lution and perseverance mucli might still be looked for. And 

 now the event has justified my half-doubtful prediction, and 

 the Synthetic Philosophy has been rounded off to a completed 

 whole. 



Of the importance of this finished work as a fact in the intel- 

 lectual annals of the nineteenth century much might, of course, 

 be said. That it is in itself the largest, most comprehensive, and 

 most ambitious plan conceived and wrought out by any single 

 thinker of our time is obvious to all ; nor will it be less obvious 

 to those who concern themselves in any way with the progress of 

 thought that, measured alike by the constructive genius mani- 

 fested in, and the far-reaching influence exerted by it, the Syn- 

 thetic Philosophy towers superbly above all other philosophic 

 achievements of the age. There is no field of mental activity 

 that Mr. Spencer has not to some extent made his own ; no line 

 of inquiry in which his power has not been felt. Even those 

 who differ the most radically from him are at the same time 

 compelled to define their positions in relation to his arguments 

 and conclusions, while his speculations constitute a common 

 point of departure for the most curiously divergent develop- 

 ments of thought. To write the history of opinion in regard 

 to his work would indeed be scarcely less than to write the his- 

 tory of biology, psychology, sociology, ethics, and political theory 

 during the past thirty years. But it would be trite and there- 

 fore needless to dwell here on all these facts. It will be more 

 to the point to seize the occasion offered by the closing of the 

 Synthetic series to speak a little of the career and personality 

 of the philosopher, and to outline in the broadest possible way 

 some of the underlying principles of his organized system of 

 thought. 



The chief matters of importance in Herbert Spencer's exter- 

 nally uneventful life are by this time sufficiently well known to 

 demand no more than the briefest recapitulation. Born in Derby, 

 England, on the 27th of April, 1820, he came of a stock in which 

 intellectual integrity, fearlessness, and independence were strongly 

 pronounced characteristics. His father was by profession a 

 teacher, holding views, however, of the aims and methods of edu- 

 cation greatly in advance of the average scholastic theories of 

 his time. It has been commonly said that it was owing largely 

 to the child's precarious health that he was permitted to grow 

 into boyhood without being subjected to the mental cramming 

 and coercion then so much in vogue. The truth of the matter, 

 however, is that he was not particularly delicate in early years, 

 and that his father's wiser course of procedure was simply the 

 result of experience, and of a dread of overtaxing the immature 

 mind by the ordinary forcing system, to which he was totally 



