HERBERT SPENCER AT SEVENTY-NINE. 545 



position of his Philosophy. As he relates in the preface to the 

 Data of Ethics and to Justice, he had already, ten years before, in 

 the imminent doubt of ever being able to complete the work as it 

 had been laid out, determined to devote his attention first to the end 

 and ultimate object of the system — to that part of it to which all 

 the rest was intended to lead up; the purpose, " lying behind all 

 proximate purposes," of finding a scientific basis for the principles 

 of right and wrong in conduct at large. When, now, the question 

 arose again of what work to undertake first, completion of the Prin- 

 ciples of Ethics was at once decided upon. As it was still doubt- 

 ful whether he would be able to accomplish even this, he took up 

 the part which seemed most important — Justice. This was pub- 

 lished as Part IV of the Ethics in the summer of 1891. No fur- 

 ther serious interruptions occurred in the execution of the work. 

 Parts II and III, completing the first volume of the Ethics, were 

 finished in the spring of 1892; and a year afterward Parts V and 

 VI were added, forming, with Justice, the second volume. 



The ethical part of the Philosophy as contemplated by Mr. Spen- 

 cer having been completed, only two divisions remained to be worked 

 out — Professional Institutions and Industrial Institutions, parts of the 

 Principles of Sociology — to fill out the whole plan, A subsidiary 

 discussion of considerable importance for the integrity of the theory 

 of evolution now intervened to be disposed of before these parts of the 

 w^ork could be proceeded with. Prof. August Weismann had pub- 

 lished a book in which he denied the transmission of acquired char- 

 acters; or, as Mr. Spencer would word it, the transmission of func- 

 tionally-wrought modifications — a very vital point in all Mr. Spen- 

 cer's philosophy. Mr. Spencer took the matter up at once, and pub- 

 lished several incisive essays refuting Professor Weismann's posi- 

 tions. He opened his argument against the neo-Darwinian position 

 with essays on the Inadequacy of Natural Selection, and on Pro- 

 fessor Weismann's Theories, and followed them, at intervals of a 

 few months, with the additional articles, A Rejoinder to Professor 

 Weismann, and Weismannism Once More. Anxious that the ques- 

 tion should be brought to the notice of every biologist, Mr. Spencer 

 had reprints of these essays distributed among the teachers of the 

 science all over Europe and America. 



The work on the final stage of Mr. Spencer's great undertaking 

 was begun about the middle of 1894. The reading of an editorial 

 in the Popular Science Monthly having suggested to him that it 

 would be desirable to do so, he published the chapters on Profes- 

 sional Institutions — serially in this periodical and in the Contempo- 

 rary Review. The chapters on Industrial Institutions did not ap- 

 pear till the third volume of the Sociology was issued in November, 

 VOL. LT. — 39 



