14 HERBERT SPENCER 
The second is a lithograph letter of thanks sent out at the time 
of his 80th birthday. 
Brighton, 
Dear Mr. Lott, April 28th, 1900. 
“ Letters and telegrams conveying the congratulations and good wishes 
of known and unknown friends, have reached me yesterday and to-day in 
such numbers that even were I in good health it would scarcely be practicable 
to write separate acknowledgments. I must therefore ask you in common 
with others, kindly to accept this general letter, which while expressing my 
thanks to those who have manifested their sympathy, also expresses my 
great pleasure in receiving so many marks of it from my own countrymen 
and from men of other nationalities. 
Faithfully yours, HERBERT SPENCER. 
P.S.—If the war was inevitable it was simply because the British are bullies. 
I do not think you can alter or remove a single word in that 
letter without altering the meaning. The postcript was a reply to a 
remark in one of my letters about this time, and will give you 
a fairly faithful idea of what Spencer thought of the Boer war. 
He would however be a bold and thoughtless man who would accuse 
Herbert Spencer of being a “ Little Englander.” 
Regarding this question of style, although it has frequently been 
stated that Spencer’s writings are hard to read. I think it will be 
found that it is really the subject matter that is hard and that 
his ewact meaning cannot be expressed in simpler or more expressive 
language without more or less altering the meaning: and this 
view will be found to be fully supported by others well able to 
judge. Thus his Secretary, Mr. Troughton, adds a note tomy MS. 
“Quite so! Maximum of meaning with a minimum of words was 
his aim. In revising MSS. and proofs he sought to realize this aim 
by deleting all superfluous words and phrases.” 
I have a good example here in a first dictation MS. of a paper 
on Vaccination. 
It contains about 200 words originally : 72 are struck out and 25 
added : and this is far from being an example of his most revised 
sheets. But with all this alteration the original idea remains 
unaltered, the style alone is changed and that is clearer and simpler. 
He revised and re-revised in order to state his exact meaning in 
the fewest and shortest words he could select. 
