124 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



his life was to Spencer a considerable and, to a large extent, an 

 irretrievable handicap. Genius cannot entirely make up for the 

 absence of the fundamental technique which can only be properly 

 acquired when one is young. It is astounding that, barring such 

 as were unavoidable at the time of his writing, there are not more 

 errors in Spencer's philosophy, and that there is so much truth — 

 truth of his day and prophetic truth — in a system resting on such 

 a fragile foundation. Indeed the amount of active substance which 

 his works contain is unusually great; an excellent proof of this is 

 afforded by the extraordinary influence they exerted upon the 

 intellectual development of the end of the nineteenth century. 



The unification of knowledge is the more necessary as knowl- 

 edge becomes more complex and specialized. If nobody had the 

 courage to attempt it, the scientific world would soon become a 

 new Tower of Babel. There are already too many specialists who 

 know what they are doing hardly more than bees do. They work 

 faithfully in their little corners, and their work is very useful. But 

 science is far more than the sum of their fragmentary efforts. 

 The growth of science is essentially an organic growth. That 

 means that at least a few people must take the trouble to digest 

 and assimilate the whole of it, in order to co-ordinate and to unify 

 it. They may err; nay, they are bound to err ever and anon; but 

 where one will err, the next one will go straight. It is so that every- 

 thing progresses. 



If encyclopedic efforts were abandoned, the amount of scien- 

 tific facts and little theories might go on increasing indefinitely, 

 but science would perish. The same is equally true of every human 

 activity. Everywhere synthetic and centripetal endeavors must 

 counterbalance the more special and centrifugal ones, lest the 

 whole fabric of life be ruined and fall to pieces. Business men, for 

 instance, have a very clear notion of this, and in proportion as 

 they standardize and specialize their industries, they are careful 

 to provide co-ordinating agencies to keep the complete body 

 together. 



But many will hasten to object: "Encyclopedic knowledge, 



