120 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



backward; they cannot help us to go onward. They impede a 

 certain amount of evil and they oblige another amount of it to 

 assume a secret form, which may be on the whole less pernicious. 

 They cannot create any parcel of positive good. Spencer's search- 

 ing analysis of these subjects is of permanent value, and even 

 if one assents to the temporary necessity of compulsory measures, 

 there is no doubt that social progress lies mainly in the direction 

 which he pointed out, the increase of voluntary co-operation. 



Spencer has often been reproached that his system is based far 

 more upon preconceived ideas than upon the observation of 

 reality. Yet it must be admitted that he managed to marshal an 

 enormous mass of facts to support his theories. If it be true that 

 the latter were generally ahead of his experience, is not the same 

 true to a certain extent of every scientific hypothesis? Never mind 

 where a man gets his theories if he can establish them on ex- 

 perimental grounds. And Spencer, however biased and ignorant 

 he may have been, took enormous pains to gather the experi- 

 mental facts which he needed. Think only of the descriptive 

 sociology whose publication began under his direction in 1873 

 and is not yet completed. Although he was very poor in the first 

 half of his life and never reached more than a small competence, 

 he spent more than three thousand pounds on this great under- 

 taking. It is a pity, by the way, that the frame of these descrip- 

 tions is so rigid and their size so awkward; but as they are, the 

 published volumes contain an enormous amount of material and 

 deserve greater recognition than they have ever received. 



Spencer's main shortcoming was his dogmatism, his inability to 

 consider the opinions of others. This dogmatism, which naturally 

 increased as he grew older, arose partly from his initial ignorance, 

 partly from his chronic neurasthenia, partly also from his lack of 

 imagination, the singleness of his purpose, the exclusiveness of his 

 thought. He was temperamentally a non-conformist, and although 

 later in life he seemed to become more and more anxious to com- 

 ply with the external conventions of society, I suppose he did 



