SPENCER 



5493 



SPENSER 



1837 to 1846 the young man was in the employ 

 of the London & Birmingham Railway, follow- 

 ing which he served as subeditor of the Econo- 

 mist, until 1853. This position gave him wide 

 opportunity for studying and writing and for 

 acquaintance- 

 ship with the 

 brilliant people 

 of the period, 

 among them be- 

 ing George Eliot, 

 George Henry 

 Lewes and John 

 Stuart Mill. 



While working 

 on his Psy- 

 chology, which 

 appeared in 1855, HERBERT SPENCER 

 he further undermined his health, and suffered 

 for the rest of his life from chronic insomnia 

 and dyspepsia. The great scheme of his life 

 was the proposed publication of a complete sys- 

 tem of philosophy, in which he aimed to out- 

 line "in a sweeping, general formula the belief 

 in progress which pervaded his age, and to erect 

 it into the supreme law of the universe as a 

 whole." A complete list of the titles of this 

 Synthetic Philosophy, as well as all of his writ- 

 ings, concludes this article. 



Spencer's philosophy is chiefly occupied with 

 defining the fields of the knowable and the un- 

 knowable. He made neither clear nor definite 

 his expressions regarding the latter, to which', 

 as he found, belong The Absolute, The Infinite, 

 Space, Matter, Time, Force and Motion. What 

 he aimed to establish was that the very fact 

 that we cannot solve ultimate metaphysical 

 questions compels us to admit the existence of 

 some supreme power behind the unknowable 

 phenomena. 



' His great contribution to science lay on the 

 positive side, where he dealt with the know- 

 able, and aimed to reduce its laws to unity. 

 The idea of evolution he applied, first, to all 

 forms of organic life, and then to social and 

 political institutions. He declared knowledge 

 is gained by twofold experience, that of the in- 

 dividual and that of the race; inherited intel- 

 lectual tendencies, therefore, are an important 

 determining factor. The prevailing law which 

 governs the phenomena of nature is the per- 

 sistence of force: there is continuous order in 

 all things and a prevalent suggestion of a com- 

 mon origin. Hence, despite his protests, he 

 became a materialist, explaining everything by 

 materialism. He declared all forms of phe- 



nomena to be the result of a passing from the 

 simple to the complex. He explained the 

 universe as a gradual development, instead of 

 accepting the doctrine of creationism (catas- 

 trophal or accidental development), of ten seem- 

 ing to fail to realize that evolution may be the 

 history of origin, but that it can never be its 

 explanation. 



Evolution is his ultimate law of nature, coun- 

 teracted by one other force, that of dissolu- 

 tion; whether or not there is progress, depends 

 on the relative strength of the former. The same 

 formulas that apply to the inorganic world he 

 also applied in explanation of the relations of 

 all phenomena in the organic, the political, the 

 social and the ethical worlds. Thus he com- 

 bined with his idea of the persistence of force 

 that of natural selection and adjustment to 

 environment (see EVOLUTION). 



Spencer stands as the great representative of 

 the scientific movement of the last part of the 

 nineteenth century. Many of his theories have 

 been disproved by more recent investigations 

 of specialists, but his masterly attempt to sat- 

 isfy the need of a comprehensive survey of the 

 world as a whole, in terms of facts rather than 

 abstractions, won for him high rank among 

 the great thinkers of all ages. To Spencer's 

 Synthetic Philosophy belong the following 

 volumes: First Principles, The Principles of 

 Biology, The Principles of Psychology, The 

 Principles of Sociology and The Principles of 

 Ethics. His other works include Essays: Sci- 

 entific, Political and Speculative; Social Stat- 

 ics; The Study of Sociology; Education: Facts 

 and Comments; Various Fragments; The In- 

 adequacy of Natural Selection; Descriptive 

 Sociology; and his Autobiography, published 

 in 1904. C.H.H. 



Consult Compayr's Herbert Spencer and Sci- 

 entific Education ; Hudson's Herbert Spencer. 



SPEN'SER, EDMUND (about 1552-1599), a 

 great English poet of the Elizabethan Age. He 

 was born at East Smithfield, London, was sent 

 to the Merchant Taylors' School, then became 

 a student at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and 

 in 1576 received from the university the de- 

 gree of M. A. Two years later he was taken 

 into the household of the Earl of Leicester, and 

 in 1579 published his Shepheardes Calender. 

 This was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, who 

 introduced the young poet to the court. In 

 the next year he was made undersecretary to 

 the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and took part in 

 restoring peace in that country at the time of 

 Desmond's rebellion. 



