690 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



brought together ; either affords support and enlarge- 

 ment to views contained in the other. 



Spencer was a solitary and independent thinker, like 

 the other three we have just been dealing with. He re- 

 sembled Comte in having only a slender connection with 

 contemporary philosophy. Only a few thinkers, such 

 as Sir Wm. Hamilton, Mansel, and John Stuart Mill, 

 seem to have influenced him. He took little or no 

 interest in the opinions of other thinkers, nor any pains 

 to understand them ; in fact, he admitted himself that 

 he never cared to read any book with the opening 

 arguments of which he could not agree. Spencer, more 

 clearly than Comte, defines the highest task of philosophy 

 much in the way that I have adopted in this chapter. 

 In fact, he has helped very materially to formulate and 

 introduce the modern definition of philosophy. He 

 considers its formal task to be unification of knowledge, 

 and, in the introduction to his ' First Principles ' — 

 which forms the first part of his system of synthetic 

 philosophy — he defines its main practical outcome as 

 the reconciliation of religion and science. 



As little as to Comte does it occur to Spencer 

 that the exposition of any philosophical system should 

 be preceded by a critical investigation of the means 

 which are at the disposal of the human mind to solve 

 its highest problems. The Kantian or critical spirit is 

 foreign to both these thinkers : they are both dogmatic, 

 inasmuch as they, without many preliminaries, state the 

 position which they take up ; in both cases the position 

 is gained by a grand generalisation of an incomplete 

 induction, and it is proved by examples and illustrations 



