HERBERT SPENCER 117 



man, he finally became in 1 848 sub-editor of the Economist. This 

 last position had the advantage of bringing him in touch with 

 many eminent men of his day; men like Huxley, Tyndall, and 

 Lewes. During all these years, he had carried on desultory read- 

 ing, he had made quite a number of trivial inventions, he had 

 done some writing and a considerable amount of solitary think- 

 ing. 



The editing of the Economist left him time enough to complete 

 his first book, Social Statics, which appeared early in 1851. In 

 1853, having inherited five hundred pounds from his uncle, he 

 abandoned this position and determined to support himself by 

 his own literary work. Such a decision is always hazardous; per- 

 haps never more so than in the case of a man like Spencer who 

 was less a writer than a thinker, whose ability to express himself 

 was constantly inhibited by the fear of error. Shortly afterward, 

 returning from a holiday in Switzerland, his health began to break 

 down. Yet he resolutely pursued the self-imposed task of which 

 he had become more and more conscious, and after many years 

 of work and meditation, of suffering and disappointment, on 

 March 77, 1860, he published the program of A System of Philos- 

 ophy, the outline of the work to which the best part of his life was 

 to be devoted. This is to me the culminating date in Spencer's life. 

 It is then that he reveals for the first time his dominant personality. 



Think of it! Here we have a man, whose systematic knowledge 

 is rather small, whom many scientists (not the greatest, however) 

 would have regarded as ignorant — and such he was in many re- 

 spects — a man handicapped by lack of means and of health, 

 but one who has been thinking hard and fast for a number of 

 years, who has measured the world around him and himself, who 

 knows exactly what he must do, who calmly estimates the im- 

 mensity of the undertaking and the frailty of the means, who 

 knows that his decision practically involves the surrender of his 

 liberty for the rest of his days and makes of him a slave to his 

 ideal — yet his faith is so great that he does not hesitate. No handi- 

 cap will stop him and he sends his program to the world; a 



