SPENCER AND EVOLUTION. 47 



whole subject required to be more deeply grounded in the knowledge 

 of Nature. Upon that deeper study of Nature he then entered, and, 

 after twenty-four years of steady and systematic preparation, the 

 problems of Social Statics are resumed in the " Principles of Sociol- 

 ogy." If so prolonged and inflexible a course of original inquiry, 

 yielding results which are felt in the highest spheres of thought, 

 are suggestive of " a weakness," we should be glad to be furnished 

 with the examples which embody Colonel Higginson's conception of 

 strength in mental character. As to the declaration that it seems ab- 

 surd to attribute to Mr. Spencer any vast enlargement or further gen- 

 eralization of the modern doctrine of Evolution, we leave its author 

 to reconcile his opinion with the fact that the System of Psychology, 

 which first extended the principle of Evolution to the sphere of mind, 

 had been nine years before the world the conception of universal 

 Evolution had been formulated and promulgated four years, and 

 " First Principles" had been for some time published, when this state- 

 ment was made. 



Mr. Emerson's criticism of Spencer is summary and decisive, as 

 becomes a man who has gone to the bottom of a subject. Reticent 

 and mystical no longer, he plumps out his opinion, when interviewed, 

 with all the confidence of one who knows what he is talking about. 

 Into the pantheon of immortals, arranged for the reporter of Frank 

 Leslie's newspaper, none may enter but star-writers, and Mr. Spencer 

 is only a " stock-writer." We may, however, presume that Mr. Emer- 

 son has here followed his transcendental lights, as there are many who 

 will insist that he is not for a moment to be suspected of having ever 

 read Mr. Spencer's books ; though it will still remain a mystery how 

 he has so skillfully contrived to make his statement as exactly wrong 

 as it could be made. It will, probably, matter little to Mr. Spencer 

 what Mi\ Emerson thinks of his position, as it can matter nothing to 

 Mr. Emerson what we think of his judgment ; but it should matter a 

 good deal to him that he do not lend the influence of his eminent name 

 to the perpetration of injustice. Speaking in the light of the facts here 

 sketched, we say that Mr. Emerson will search the annals of author- 

 ship in vain to find an instance in which his epithet would be more 

 grossly misapplied. And we will do him the justice to say that in 

 other days he has taught us a more generous lesson in regard to what 

 is due from the manly and liberal-minded to the heroic endeavors of 

 noble and unrecognized men. Many of his admirers will recall with 

 pleasure the following admirable passage : " "What is the scholar, 

 what is the man for, but for hospitality to every new thought of his 

 time ? Have you leisure, power, property, friends ? you shall be the 

 asylum of every new thought, every unproved opinion, every untried 

 project, which proceeds out of good-will and honest seeking. All the 

 newspapers, all the tongues of to-day, will, of course, at first defame 

 what is noble ; but you, who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but 



