454 PEESONALIA: 1898-1906 



To Inglis Palgrave 



December 23, 1903. 



[In reply to some remarks on Herbert Spencer's works.] 



I am not surprised at what you say regarding Spencer 

 and his work. I attribute much of your dislike to the effect 

 of his style and diction, which Huxley and I often discussed 

 and regretted ; but more I think may possibly be put down 

 to the stern face set against scientific thought, method and 

 teaching in the educational system of your early years. You 

 somehow acquired an appreciation of scientific methods by 

 the light of nature, and showed it in those of your early 

 writings, which in the opinion of your more scientifically 

 minded friends, induced them to urge your claims on these 

 very grounds, for election into the Eoyal Society, but this 

 appreciation went no further than your own professional 

 work and habits of thought, as far as you were concerned. 

 Then too, may there not be a little of the odium theologicum 

 in your dislike of Spencer's system of philosophy ? 



As it is, I do not think that any one, except a deeply 

 read man, can appreciate the immensity of Spencer's converse 

 with all that man has done in the spread of knowledge, and 

 of its influence in the development of every phase of his 

 advancement from the savage to the highest civilisation. 



I am wholly unable to draw the line between Bacon and 

 Spencer ; I feel that I do not know enough of the work of 

 either, though I have everything that Spencer wrote, up to 

 his last volume, all gifts from himself. 



My mother read his little work on education, and was 

 much taken with it, though thinking it was too highly pitched 

 for practical purposes. She told me it was the best book 

 ever written for bachelor's children. 



Did you happen to read Eiicker's address to the ' Modern 

 Languages Association ' in to-day's Times, p. 5 ? It is very 

 good ; but there is one matter affecting early education that 

 I have never seen discussed, it is the adverse effect of the 

 modern boy being in point of self education so enormously 

 in advance of what boys were 50 years ago. By self educa- 

 tion I mean all that he gets by contact with his surroundings, 

 social, political, commercial, and everything else, especially 

 penny papers. It was comparatively easy for an empty- 



