622 



SPENCER 



hi- father took ottice as Secretary' of State for the 

 Home Department in the Urenville-Fox iiiinism. 

 He sat for Northamptonshire from this time till 

 the Reform Bill, anil in the Reformed parliament 

 for the southern division of the county. He went 

 oat with the Whigw in 1807, and gave steady oppo- 

 sition during the long Tory rc-ign thereafter. On 

 the dis-olnt ion of the Wellington cabinet in Novem- 

 ber 1830 he hecame Chancellor of the Exchequer 

 and leader of the House of Commons in the cele- 

 brated Reform ministry of Earl Grey. The Reform 

 Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell, but the 

 task of carrying the bill mainly devolved upon 

 Spencer. In 1833 he brought in and carried the 

 ministerial bill for reforming the Irish Church. In 

 this memorable working session the curious statis- 

 tician discovered that S|x>ncer, who had, from his 

 post of ministerial leader, naturally lx k en the most 

 frequent speaker, had addressed the House 1026 

 times, his speeches occupying 387 columns in the 

 then Mirror of Parliament, w'hen the Irish Coer- 

 cion Bill was under consideration in the cabinet 

 Spencer had opposed the clauses prohibiting public 

 meetings, yet had given way rather than break up 

 the ministry, but when the truth was elicited in 

 debate by Mr O'Connell he resigned. He was 

 considered and described by Karl Grey as his 

 'right-hand man,' and without his assistance the 

 earl felt himself unable to carry on the government. 

 The administration of Viscount Melbourne suc- 

 ceeded (July 1834), in which Spencer consented to 

 resume his oflice. In Novemlwr he was called by 

 the death of his father to the House of Peers, 

 which had the effect of bringing the Melbourne 

 administration to an end. When the attempt of 

 Sir Robert Peel to carry on the government failed 

 Spencer declined to take office again. He devoted 

 his time to agricultural pursuits, became president 

 of the Smithtield Cattle Club, and suggested the 

 formation of the Royal Agricultural Society, of 

 which he was elected president in 1838. He died 

 at his seat, Wiseton Hall, Notts, October 1, 1846, 

 without issue, and was succeeded by his brother. 

 Duriiif; his ]>olitical career his simplicity of charac- 

 ter and integrity of purpose obtained for him the 

 ap|>ellatioii of honest Lord Althorp.' He was very 

 little of an orator, but he had a clear and practical 

 intellect, and his influence over the Reformed 

 House of Commons was supreme. Lord Brougham 

 dedicated to him his work on A'utural Theology; 

 and his Dialogues on Instinct are also supposed to 

 be carried on with Spencer, to whose cultivation 

 of philosophy in the midst of his political and 

 agricultural pursuits the author bears friendly 

 testimony. See Memoir by Sir Denis I,c Marchant, 

 Bart. ( 1876), Walter Bagehot's Biographical Studies 

 (1881), and Ernest Myers' Lord Althorp (1890). 

 JOHN POYNTZ SPENCER, fifth earl, was lx>rn 

 Octolwr 27, 1835, and was educated at Harrow 

 and Trinity College, Cambridge. He had sat 

 but a few months in the House of Commons 

 for South Northamptonshire when the death of 

 hU father in 1857 sent him to the House of 

 Lords. He was Lord-lieutenant of Ireland from 

 1868 to 1874, in 1H80 Itecame Lord -president of the 

 'onncil, and during 1882-8.'! was Lord-lieutenant of 

 Ireland. In the Lilienil governments of 1886 and 

 1892 he was again 1'resiilent of the Council. He 

 embraced Mr < iladstone's Home Knle policy, having 

 during hi* t<-nui e of office at Dublin Castlo come to 

 the conclusion that coercion wag a failure. 



SiM'iH'iT. HKKRERT, wh has attempted to 

 work onl a complete system of philosophy in 

 harmony with evolution and the results of modern 

 science, was liorn at Derby, 27th April 1820. His 

 father was a schoolmaster in that town, and 

 secretary of tin 1 Philosophical Society; and from 

 him Spencer imbibed that love of natural science 



and wonderful faculty of observation so conspicu- 

 ous in his works. The father was greatly interested 

 in entomology' ; and S|>ei>cer himself used to collect, 

 describe, and draw insects when a l>\. Insur- 

 mountable aversion to linguistic studies put a 

 Cambridge career out of the question, and at the 

 age of seventeen he entered upon the piofc--ion 

 of a railway engineer under Mr (afterwards Sir 

 Charles) Fox, in London; but about eight years 

 afterwards he gave up this profession, which lacked 

 interest for him. He had already contributed vari- 

 ous papers to the Ctril Enijhieers' and Architects' 

 .1:, Hi-mil : and in the later half of 1842 he wrote a 

 series of letters to the nonconformist newspaper on 

 'The Proper Sphere of Government,' which were 

 republisheil in pamphlet form in 1843. These 

 letters imply a lieliet in human progress based on 

 the moditiahility of human nature through adapta- 

 tion to its social surroundings, and maintain the 

 tendency of these social arrangements 'of them- 

 selves to assume a condition of stable equilibrium.' 

 From 1848 to 1853 be was sub-editor of the 

 Economist newspaper; and at this time he 

 developed the ethical and political consequences 

 of the ideas he had already enunciated, and sought 

 an independent basis for them. Hence his hrst 

 im|Mirtant work, Social Statics ( 1850 ; abridged and 

 revised, 1892). It is thus noticeable that Spencer's 

 philosophical activity began with ethical and social 

 questions. The conception of the evolution of man 

 and society as determined by circumstances, and 

 the idea that organic and social evolutions are 

 under the same law, preceded the elaboration of 

 those scientific ideas which, in the complete System 

 of Philosophy, are made to serve as their basis. 

 The truth anticipated by Harvey and Wolff, but 

 first put into definite shape by Von Baer 'the 

 truth that all organic development is a change 

 from a state of homogeneity to a state of hetero- 

 geneity ' is regarded by Spencer as the organising 

 principle of his subsequent beliefs. It was gradu- 

 ally deve!oj>ed and applied by him in a series of 

 articles contributed in the following years to the 

 Leader, the North British, British Quarterly, 

 Mcdico-Chirurgical, Westminster, and other re- 

 views. 



In these essays, especially those on The Derelop- 

 uniit Hypothesis (1852), Manners and fashion 

 ( 1 854 ), 1 he Genesis of Science ( 1 864 ), and Progress : 

 its Law and Cause (1857), and in the volume of 

 Principles of Psychology (1856), the doctrine of 

 evolution began to take definite form, and to be 

 applied to various departments of inquiry. The 

 publication of Darwin s Origin of Species, in 1859, 

 gave a wide basis of scientific proof for what had 

 hitherto been matter of speculation, and lirst 

 showed the important part played l.y natural 

 selection in the development of organisms. 



In 1864 Spencer published an essay on the 

 Classification of the Sciences, in which he criticised 

 Comic's serial arrangement of the sciences accord 

 in^' to generality, and suhstiiuted for itaclassili 

 cation according to abstractness : (1) Alu-trm-t 

 Science, treating of the forms (space and time) in 

 which phenomena are known to us logic and 

 mathematics; (2) Abstract-concrete Science, treat- 

 ing of the laws of the factors of the phenomena 



themselves mechanics, physics, cht stry, \e. ; 



(3) Cuti'-i-iti Sririirc, treating of the phenomena in 

 their totalities ( the laws of the products ) astro- 

 nomy, geology, biology, psychology, sociology, &c. 



U|H>II this scheme of the sciences Spencer had 

 now been working for several veins. As early as 

 1860 he had announced the issue of a System of 

 Xyiif/utir J'hilosojihy, already in course of prepara- 

 tion, which, beginning with the first principles of 

 all knowledge, proposed to trace how the law of 

 evolution was gradually realised in life, mind, 



