Herbert Spencer and the Doctrine of Evolution. 503 



That the system of doctrine put forth by Mr. Spencer would 

 meet with strong opposition was inevitable. Representing 

 the most advanced opinions, and disturbing widely cher- 

 ished beliefs at many points, it was natural that it should 

 be strenuously resisted and unsparingly criticised. Nor 

 is this to be regretted, as it is by conflict that truth is 

 elicited; and those who, after candid examination, hold 

 his teachings to be erroneous and injurious, are certainly 

 justified in condemning them. With such, at the present 

 time, I have no controversy, but propose to deal with quite 

 another class of critics. There are men of eminence, lead- 

 ers of opinion, who neither know nor care much for what 

 Mr. Spencer thinks or has done, but are quite ready with 

 their verdicts about him ; and, so long as it is not gener- 

 ally known to what an extent we are indebted to him for 

 having originated and elaborated the greatest doctrine of 

 the age, these superficial and careless deliverances from 

 conspicuous men become very misleading and injurious. 

 By many he is regarded as only a clever and versatile 

 essayist, ambitious of writing upon everything, and who 

 has done something to popularize the views of Mr. Darwin 

 and other men of science. For example, M. Taine, in a late 

 Paris journal, says : " Mr. Spencer possesses the rare merit 

 of having extended to the sum of phenomena to the 

 whole history of Nature and of mind the two master 

 thoughts which, for the past thirty years, have been giving 

 new form to the positive sciences ; the one being Mayer 

 and Joule's Conservation of Energy, the other Darwin's 

 Natural Selection." Colonel Higginson says: * "Mr. Spen- 

 cer has what Talleyrand calls the weakness of omniscience, 

 and must write not alone on astronomy, metaphysics, and 

 banking, but also on music, on dancing, on style." And 

 again : " It seems rather absurd to attribute to him, as a 



* Estimating Spencer, in The Friend of Progress, 1864. 



