4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



-ions once and for all, was in the sequel to alter absolutely 

 and fundamentally the whole trend and current of thought, not 

 only as regards the outer organic world and the phenomena pre- 

 sented by it, bnt as regards also the countless practical problems 

 in life and s.-cidy, in morality and religion, which are forever 

 pressing on as for solution. 



Such, in the brief est possible summary, was the general intel- 

 lectual character of the period at which Mr. Spencer began the 

 Labors of his life. Even the sketch just given, crude and imperfect 

 as il arily is, will help us to understand the growth of his 



own ideas, and their relation to the changing thought of the day. 



During the year 1842 Spencer, then in his twenty-second year, 

 had contributed to a weekly newspaper, called The Nonconformist, 

 - of letters which were afterward republished in pamphlet 

 form under the title of The Proper Sphere of Government. "With 

 the political doctrines of this production we have here no special 

 concern, though it may be worth while to mention that the key- 

 note is there struck of that famous doctrine of governmental non- 

 Interference, since so fully worked out and so frequently insisted 

 on by the author. The pamphlet is significant for us from quite 

 another point of view. In the attempt which is made in it to 



kblish the nature, scope, and limits that is, the fundamental 

 principles of civil government, there is everywhere implied a 

 belief in the ultimate dependence of social organization upon 

 natural causes and natural laws. In other words, society is from 

 first to last regarded, not as a manufacture but as a growth a 

 view which, it maybe remarked incidentally, though familiar 

 enough in our own day, at all events in its theoretic aspects, was 

 then little known, even as a matter of mere speculation. Through- 

 out the entire argument there run the conceptions of gradual 

 changes naturally necessitated, and of the possibility of a better 

 and lutter adjustment of man, physically, intellectually, and 

 morally, to the needs imposed by the conditions of social life. As 

 Mr. Spencer himself wrote, many years later, "In these letters 

 will be found, along with many crude ideas," a " belief in the 

 conformity of social phenomena to invariable laws," and "in hu- 

 man progression as determined by such laws."* All this revealed, 

 even at bo early a Btage of mental growth, a marked tendency to 



.card the complicated and entangled phenomena of society from 



rictly scientific point of view as phenomena exhibiting rela- 



and effect, and thus to be included in the realm of 



iral law. But it meant something more than this. The dis- 



ad conscious acceptance of the doctrine that society is a 



thing, not artificially pieced together, but of slow and natural 



* Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte. 



