INTEGRATIVE LEVELS ^ 



Station at some 30 miles an hour may be well imagined. . . . 

 After passing Harrow station the line enters upon a curve, and 

 a loss of velocity necessarily followed. The train now began 

 rapidly to increase its distance, and shortly disappeared into the 

 gloom. Still, though my speed had diminished, I rushed on at a 

 great pace. Presently, seeing at a little distance in front the 

 light of a lantern, held, I concluded, by a foreman of the plate- 

 layers, who was going back to the station after having seen the 

 last train pass, I shouted to him; thinking that if he would run 

 at the top of his speed he might perhaps catch hold of the waggon 

 and gradually arrest it. He, however, stood staring; too much 

 astonished, even if he understood me, and as I learned next 

 day, when he reached Harrow, reported he had met a man in 

 a newly-invented carriage which had run away with him! . . . 

 After being carried some two miles beyond Harrow, I began 

 rather to rejoice that the truck was going so far, for I remembered 

 that at no great distance in advance was the Brent siding, into 

 which the truck might easily be pushed instead of back to Harrow, 

 I looked with satisfaction to this prospect, entertaining no doubt 

 that the waggon would come to rest in time. By and by, however, 

 it became clear that the truck would not only reach this siding 

 but pass it; and then came not a little alarm, for a mile or so 

 further along was the level-crossing at Willesden, w^here I 

 should probably be thrown out and killed. . . . However, on 

 reaching Brent bridge, the truck began to slacken speed, and 

 finally came to a stand in the middle of the embankment crossing 

 the Brent valley." 



How Spencer had to seek help to clear the line and finally got 

 home in the early hours of the morning, we need not here relate* 

 But of all the symbolic occurrences which have happened to great 

 men, this is surely one of the most remarkable. Spencer wanted to 

 stop at the intermediate station in evolutionary sociology, but in the 

 progress of organisation to ever higher levels, there is no such oppor- 

 tunity. The class of which he was the intellectual representative 

 wanted to stop at the intermediate station of domestic capitalism, but 

 the inner logic of the process demanded that expansion should go on 

 and the local mill-owner should give place to the trustified imperialist. 

 Moreover, the inevitable industrialisation of the working-class led to 

 demands of diametrically opposite nature, so that Spencer was driven 



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