SPENCER, HERBERT. 



STOWE. HARRIET BEECH Kit. 715 



volume in which linguistic, intellectual, moral, and 

 aesthetic progre>s was to have been traced out, is 

 left unwritten. Sundry of the more momentous 

 questions connected with these phases of human de- 

 velopment, however, are touched upon in other 

 parts of the system, and the hiatus is, therefore, by 

 no means serious. On the other hand, the remain- 

 ing divisions of the work have, in the writing, un- 

 dergone unlooked-for expansion. 



One large aspect of universal evolution remains 

 to be considered, before the organization of knowl- 

 edge demanded by philosophy can be taken as com- 

 plete ; and this aspect of such importance as to 

 lead Mr. Spencer to describe all other parts of his 

 work as subsidiary to its interpretation we reach 

 in the concluding 'two volumes of the series, com- 

 prising the " Principles of Ethics." In his work of 

 reconstructing ethical theory in harmony with the 

 fundamental doctrines of his philosophy. Mr. Spen- 

 cer takes a most important step in advance of the 

 results reached by the various schools of scientific 

 moralists in the past. His system is, of course, hed- 

 onistic or utilitarian that is, the final criterion 

 and ultimate end of conduct is for him happiness, 

 pleasure, or well-being. He has sought to convert 

 the laws of conduct from truths of the empirical 

 into truths of the rational order. As he wrote to 

 Mill : " I conceive it to be the business of moral 

 science to deduce from the laws of life and the con- 

 ditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily 

 tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to pro- 

 duce unhappiness. Having done this, its deduc- 

 tions are to be recognized as laws of conduct, and 

 are to be conformed to. irrespective of a direct esti- 

 mation of happiness or misery.'' 



If it is asked toward what general conclusions re- 

 garding the moral prospects of the race the Spen- 

 cerian ethics may be said to point, the broadest an- 

 swer will be found in the statement of the universal 

 law, already frequently referred to the law of 

 equilibration. We bring with us into life instincts 

 and impulses which we derive from our long line of 

 animal and barbarous ancestry: our natures are 

 very imperfectly adjusted to the demands of social 

 life. But the influences of advancing civilization 

 have throughout human evolution been gradually 

 molding character into more complete harmony 

 with the sum total of the conditions under which 

 we live. Hence we may anticipate a time, far dis- 

 tant though it must needs be, when the internal 

 forces which we know as feelings will be in fairly 

 perfect balance with the external forces they en- 

 counter ; when, in other words, the nature of man 

 will have become fully adapted to the associated 

 state. Mr. Spencer has. indeed, within recent years 

 spoken less optimistically about this consummation 

 than he did when, in "Social Statics.'' he asserted 

 the evanescence of evil. But he still looks forward 

 to an "approximately complete adjustment" of 

 constitution to conditions as the goal of moral evo- 

 lution, toward which we are actually, if slowly, 

 moving. 



What are the bearings of the Spencerian phi- 

 losophy upon the ultimate questions of religion ? 

 Briefly thus. The chemist can not explain the ulti- 

 mate nature of matter, nor the physicist, the ulti- 

 mate nature of motion, nor the psychologist the 

 ultimate nature of mind. Matter, motion, mind 

 are but symbols, expressing for us the manifesta- 

 tions of an unknown power, and. pushed to the ut- 

 most limits of simplification, the symbols remain 

 symbols still. The question at issue between spirit- 

 ualists and materialists, therefore, viewed from the 

 Spencerian standpoint, resolves itself into a question 

 of these symbols, and any answer that can conceiv- 

 ably be given leaves us as completely outside the 

 reality as we were at first. Spirit and matter must 



thus be regarded simply as signs of the ultima: 

 istcnce that underlies both. The absolute and un- 

 conditioned existence that transcends human intel- 

 ligence, in which the subject, object, spirit, matter 

 of our finite consciousness merge and are united, 

 is not for Mr. Spencer mere zero a neg 

 thought. It is a positive fact of the profoiinde-t 

 certitude; or rather it is the final fact suMaining 

 all others the fact which science finds at the back 

 of its widest generalizations and beneath its deep- 

 est truths. And this final fact of science, this ulti- 

 mate datum of consciousness, upon which all knowl- 

 edge depends, this cause of all causes in the universe 

 as it is revealed to us, is the permanent foundation 

 of all religion as well. Here the ancient foes meet 

 in complete reconciliation. Science must necessarily 

 end in the mystery with which religion begins. 

 "That which persists unchanging in quantity but 

 ever changing in form," under the sensible appear- 

 ances " which the universe presents to us," is an 

 " unknown and unknowable power which we are 

 obliged to recognize as without limit in space and 

 without beginning or end in time." and this nou- 

 menal power of philosophy, of which all phenomena 

 are but manifestations, is the God of religion " the 

 infinite and eternal energy from which all things 

 proceed." 



STOWE. HAREIET BEECHER, author, born 

 in Litchfield. Conn.. June 14. 1811 : died in Hart- 

 ford, Conn.. July 1, 1896. Her father, the Rev. 

 Lyman Beecher. was pastor of a Congregational 

 church in Litchfield. Her mother, Roxana Foote 

 Beecher. a woman of strong character, died when 

 Harriet was but four years old, and the daughter 

 afterward wrote: "Although my mother's bodily 

 presence disappeared from our circle, I think that 

 her memory and example had more influence in 

 molding her family than the living presence of 

 many mothers.'' Catherine, her sister, was eleven 

 years old when their mother died, and from that 

 time much of the care of Harriet devolved upon 

 her. Mrs. Stowe was educated at Litchfield Acade- 

 my, under the charge of Sarah Pierce and John 

 Brace. Of the latter she wrote : " Mr. Brace ex- 

 ceeded all teachers I ever knew in the faculty of 

 teaching composition. Much of the inspiration 

 and training of my early days consisted not in 

 the things I was supposed to be studying, but in 

 the hearing, while seated unnoticed at my desk, the 

 conversation of Mr. Brace with the older cla- 

 But the strongest and most lasting educational in- 

 fluences of her early life were found in the homes 

 in which she lived. In the family of an aunt in 

 Guilford, Conn., she was introduced to Walter 

 Scott's novels and poems, to Burns, to the "Ara- 

 bian Nights." and to a host of charming and whole- 

 some books in which her imagination reveled so 

 eagerly that it was her delight to repeat great num- 

 bers of poems, hymns, and prose extracts. In her 

 father's library she found literature that gave to 

 the inherited trend of her mind the deeply enthu- 

 siastic religious power that pervaded so much of her 

 writing, notably the story of Uncle Tom. Cotton 

 Mather's " Magnolia Christi Americana " and simi- 

 lar works vied with the " Arabian Xights " in hold- 

 ing her interest, and when she was twelve years old 

 she wrote an essay entitled " Can the Immortality 

 of the Soul be proved by the Light of Nature i " 

 She took the ground that it can not. Mr. Brace, 

 her teacher, read the essay in her father's presence 

 without telling him its origin, and at its close Dr. 

 Beecher asked with emphasis Who wrote that : " 

 Mrs. Stowe. in recording the incident, says : " It 

 was the proudest moment of my life. There was 

 no mistaking my father's face when he was pleased, 

 and to have interested him was past all juvenile 

 triumphs." 



