1 86 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



that the Abbey, ' as a place of Christian worship, 

 could not appropriately receive the monument of a 

 thinker who expressly excluded Christianity from 

 his system of thought/ In January of the same 

 year the Town Council of Derby, Spencer's native 

 place, adopted a resolution recording its sense of his 

 great services as a ' scientific philosopher/ but not 

 before a protest against accepting ' his views about 

 the creation in preference to the Scripture record ' 

 had been discussed. 



In 1904 there was published the Autobiography 

 on which it was known Spencer had been engaged 

 at intervals for thirty years. So complete a revelation 

 of his own character and limitations renders com- 

 ment on these unnecessary here, even if space per- 

 mitted. As a composition its prolixity and defective 

 sense of proportion place it on the lower plane ; it 

 is not to be mentioned in the same breath with the 

 masterpieces bequeathed by Cellini or Gibbon, but 

 it cannot be neglected for full understanding of its 

 remarkable author. 



The pathos of Spencer's last years is described 

 in the Fortnightly Review, January 1904, by one 

 who had served him, and who knew him well Pro- 

 fessor W. H. Hudson. ' He saw his political advice 

 disregarded, and on all sides an exuberant growth of 

 the socialistic organisations which he had spent him- 

 self in criticising. The recrudescence of militarism, 

 the development of a sordidly materialistic spirit 

 throughout the modern nations, and their abandon- 

 ment of the principles of sanity and political 

 righteousness all these cast a very black shadow 

 over his declining path/ 



