IV MODERN EVOLUTION 167 



the Linnean Society. The author of that essay was 

 the late Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the foregoing 

 extract from it may fitly preface a brief account of 

 his life-work in co-ordinating the manifold branches 

 of knowledge into a synthetic whole. In erecting a 

 complete theory of Evolution on a purely scientific 

 basis ' his profound and vigorous writings/ to quote 

 Huxley, 'embody the spirit of Descartes in the know- 

 ledge of our own day.' Laying the foundation of his 

 massive structure in early manhood, Mr. Spencer had 

 the rare satisfaction of placing the topmost stone on 

 the building which his brain devised and his hand 

 upreared. When the sheets of the first edition of 

 this book were being passed for press, there arrived 

 the third volume of the Principles of Sociology, which 

 completed Mr. Spencer's ' Synthetic Philosophy.' 

 The preface to this has the following passage: 



1 On looking back over the six-and-thirty years 

 which I have passed since the " Synthetic Philo- 

 sophy" was commenced, I am surprised at my 

 audacity in undertaking it, and still more sur- 

 prised by its completion. In 1860 my small 

 resources had been nearly all frittered away in 

 writing and publishing books which did not repay 

 their expenses ; and I was suffering under a chronic 

 disorder, caused by overtax of brain, in 1855, which, 

 wholly disabling me for eighteen months, thereafter 

 limited my work to three hours a day, and usually 

 to less. How insane my project must have seemed 

 to onlookers, may be judged from the fact that 

 before the first chapter of the first volume was 

 finished, one of my nervous breakdowns obliged me 

 to desist.' 



