NATURE 



265 



THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1904. 



THE MIND OF A GREAT THINKER. I 

 An Autobiography. By Herbert Spencer. Two 



volumes. Pp., vol. i., .\ii + ss6; vol. ii., ix + 542. 



(London : XA'illiams and Norgate, 1904.) Price 28s. 



net. 



A GREAT and peculiar interest attaches to these 

 .^ »■ volumes, because in them Herbert Spencer has 

 displayed the steps of the evolution in his own mind 

 of that great scheme of universal evolution which has 

 so profoundly affected modern thought, and has de- 

 scribed the mental characteristics that conduced to the 

 conception and the working out of that scheme. 

 Spencer was peculiarly well fitted for the task of self- 

 revelation, and it may safely be said that never before 

 have the mental processes by which a great thinker 

 has produced a vast svstem of conceptions been so 

 clearly exposed. 



The exposition is scattered through more than a 

 thousand pages of matter, much of which is trivial 

 or redundant, and it is perhaps -worth while to set 

 down consecutively, and in what seems the order of 

 relative importance, the peculiarities of the philo- 

 sopher's mind and character which, according to his 

 own account, played a principal part in making the 

 synthetic philosophy just that which it is. 



Spencer rightly claims that he possessed in an ex- 

 ceptional degree the three great faculties (i) of de- 

 ductive synthesis ; (2) of analysis, leading to the 

 discovery in complex and seemingly widely different 

 phenomena of the elements or features that they have 

 in common, and so to the inductive verification of large 

 deductions; (3) "the ability to discern inconspicuous 

 analogies." 



The first of these was conspicuously manifested at 

 every stage of the development of the system, the 

 earliest considerable display of it being the deduction 

 from the " law of equal freedom " of the conclusions 

 as to political and social institutions presented in 

 "Social Statics." The second was early manifested 

 in the famous essay on "The Universal Postulate," 

 which aimed " to identify the common elements of all 

 those beliefs . . . which we regard as having absolute 

 validity." The third was brilliantly exercised in the 

 discovery of that celebrated analogy which has now 

 become incorporated in common speech in the phrase 

 " the social organism." 



These three powers were certainly present in very 

 high degree, and the deductive and inductive 

 tendencies preserved a balance such as is by no means 

 common. But it is possible that many minds have 

 equalled Spencer's in these respects, and the exceptional 

 development of these powers would not have sufficed 

 to give us the synthetic philosophy in the absence of 

 certain other very strongly marked mental traits that 

 contributed to render Spencer's mind peculiarly 

 effective in the carrying out of the great work that he 

 accomplished. Among these the first place must be 

 assigned to the effective belief in universal causation 

 according to immutable laws, a belief early acquired 

 NO. 18 I 2, VOL. 70] 



and constantly fostered by the questions put to young 

 Spencer by his father, who rightly considered the lead- 

 ing to a search after causes to be the most important 

 function of the educator. " \ constant question with 

 him was, — ' I wonder what is the cause of so-and-so ' ; 

 — always the tendency in himself, and the tendency 

 strengthened in me, was to regard everything as 

 naturally caused." The " constitutional readiness to 

 grasp the abstract necessity of causal relations " thus 

 " rendered by practice unusually strong," Spencer 

 himself seems to have regarded, probablv rightly, as 

 the most important feature of his intellectual equip- 

 ment, just as the lack of development, and, in fact, the 

 actual repression, of this tendency, strong in most 

 children, was and still is the gravest defect of English 

 education. Hardly less important was the supreme 

 confidence in his own mental processes, amounting, 

 indeed, to intellectual arrogance, which, at the age of 

 twenty, rendered him desirous of making public 

 " some of my ideas upon the state of the world and 

 religion," and which, a much more exceptional fact, re 

 mained unimpaired throughout his long life. There 

 can be no doubt that this was essential to his achieve- 

 ment; by the lack of such confidence many fine 

 intellects are rendered sterile, and had Spencer not 

 possessed it in a very remarkable degree, had he been 

 ever so slightly infected with that diffidence which was 

 so marked a trait of his friend, George Eliot, he would 

 not even have embarked upon a literary career, or, if 

 embarked, he must have remained comparatively un- 

 productive. 



Closely allied with this last, and still more closely 

 allied with one another, were the three traits " dis- 

 regard of authority," " the absence of moral fear," 

 and the tendency to criticise rather than to appreciate, 

 each carried to a very extraordinary pitch. These, 

 generating a repugnance to every kind of statement 

 based upon authority and not appealing to reason for 

 its acceptance, seem to have determined the trend of 

 intellectual activity from the earliest years, from the 

 time when as a small boy Spencer refused to apply 

 himself to the study of Latin or of other languages 

 and at the age of thirteen years rejected the current 

 definition of inertia, to the time when he set aside all 

 religious authority, laid down Kant's " Critique of 

 Pure Reason " rejecting his doctrine of time and space 

 " at once and absolutely " after reading a few pages 

 only, set himself in " Man v. the State " in unqualified 

 opposition to the dominant trend of political change, 

 and criticised adversely the frescoes of Michael .Angelo 

 in the Sistine Chapel, the compositions of Raphael 

 and of Wagner, the dialogues of Plato and the archi- 

 tecture of Venice. 



Important, too, was his persistencv in the pursuit 

 of any end, his " tendency ... to be enslaved bv a plan 

 once formed," frequently displayed throughout life in 

 things both large and small. Without this natural 

 persistency he would not have gone far towards the 

 completion of his great scheme in the face of serious 

 pecuniary difficulties and in spite of disturbances of 

 health which, whether they were serious or not, 

 certainly diminished very greatly his capacity for work. 

 In boyhood this persistency was displayed very remark- 



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