IG SOCIOLOGY. 



other accidental causes have no made acquaiutauca with Mr. Herbert 



Spencer's writings, have sometimes acquired a prejudice against them. 



Was noble man but made ignoble talk. 



He makes uo friend who never made a foe. — Tennyson. 



To use an illustration of his own : " While yet in its nurse's arms, 

 the infant, by hiding its face and crying at the sight of a stranger, 

 shows the dawning instinct to attain safety by flying from that which 

 is unknown and may be dangerous." That illustration, which is 

 doubtless very applicable to later life, is, as you are aware, from the 

 " Education," and I venture to think that if we followed the example 

 of our French neighbours and printed that Essay alone for gratuitous 

 distribution many lives would be annually saved, and that there is not 

 a single person of average intelligence who reads it but would in some 

 way derive benefit from it. Whether we admit it or reject it, it cannot 

 be doubted that Mr. Herbert Spencer's writings are acquiring a 

 wonderful influence in this country, on the Continent, and in America. 

 Scarcely a newspaper or magazine can be taken up but there appears 

 an article which borrows force from his deductions or quotes one of 

 his aphorisms on the doctrine of evolution. " The adaptation of 

 the organism to its environment ' — the " egoism and the altruism " 

 — that wonderful description which he gives of life as " the definite 

 combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 

 successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and 

 sequences" — or simpler, "the adjustment of internal to external 

 relations — are familiar in our mouths as household words. If time 

 were not important I should be glad to quote from " First Principles "' 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer's views on Keligion and Science — from the 

 " Social Statics " his views on progi-ess, and from the " Study of 

 Sociology " his views on government. But these are, of course, well 

 known to most of the members of this Section. 



Of the Synthetic Philosophy, that vast system which, com- 

 mencing with " first principles" — the knowable and the unknowable — 

 carries its students through the principles of Biology, Psychology, 

 Sociology, and Morality (which last and greatest work of all— 

 a portion of which only, " The Data of Ethics," has as yet 

 been published— we most fervently trust its learned and gifted 

 author may live to accomplish), gives a rational conception 

 of the Cosmos, and applies the doctrine of evolution to all 

 the phenomena, organic and inorganic, which go to build up our 

 planet, time also allows me only just to allude to generally ; but 

 I think I may paraphrase the words of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace 

 applied to the author of the " Origin of Species," and say, "that if 

 other principles should hereafter be discovered, or if it be proved 

 that some of his subsidiary theories are wholly or partially erroneous, 

 this very discovery can only be made by following in his (Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer's) steps, by adopting the method of research which he has 

 taught us, and by largely using the rich store of material which he 

 has collected."* _^^_ 



* " Tropical Nature and other Essays," by Alfred Bussel Wallace, p. 2.53. 

 Loudou : Macmillan and Co., 3879. 



