Second and Third Visits to England. 205 



as far as 1 can learn, by anybody, and that is not the worst. 

 An article has just appeared in the Christian Examiner, by 

 " Time and Space " Abbot, of a most malignant character 

 concerning Spencer. It is able and ugly. I am afraid of 

 the effect, as it circulates among just the class to whom 

 the appeal is to be made. I received your letter contain- 

 ing Mill's letter to Spencer. I was glad to get it this 

 morning, as its tendency was somewhat to counteract the 

 unpleasant effect of the Examiner paper. That article ac- 

 cords merit to Spencer as an organizer of the sciences, but 

 is savage on his religious doctrines, and his cowardice as 

 evinced in his preface to his Psychology, where he says 

 there was a fifth part withheld from prudence.* At any 

 other time I should not mind it, but now it is bad. I shall, 

 however, go forward with the undertaking to see what will 

 come of it. I have seen nobody yet, and have just drawn 

 up the paper for signature. 



NEW YORK, March 2fth. 



I am working away with all my might upon the review 

 for the Tribune. I find I have a considerably shorter time 

 to do it in than I had expected. Ripley leaves Boston 

 April 25th, and New York a week earlier, and he wants 

 this thing attended to before he goes, as also do I. I am 

 getting on very well with it that is, I have got well at 

 work. I have a little room at the club, warmed and cosy, 

 where I go most of the day and till late at night ; it is 

 perfectly still and quiet, and favourable to my work. I 



* This absurd charge of " cowardice," brought against Mr. Spencer by 

 Mr. Abbot, would seem to have been made in a spirit of mere captiousness. 

 The fifth part of the Psychology, entitled Physical Synthesis, was withheld 

 from the first edition in 1855 simply because Mr. Spencer rightly believed 

 that without more explanatory context than he could provide for it in that 

 book it would not be correctly understood. After the publication of First 

 Principles and Biology the case was altered, and the second edition of the 

 Psychology contained the portion omitted in the first, with many other 

 additions. 



