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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 726 



For he himself has said it, 

 And it's greatly to his credit, 



That he is an Englishman! 

 But in spite of all temptationj 

 To belong to other nations. 



He remains " the " Englishman. 



The immense transvaluation that occurred 

 during Spencer's life has, I feel sure, as much 

 to do with these curioui,, unpleasing, and 

 puzzling traits as any mere heritable quality. 

 This appears further in the dogmatic judg- 

 ments he offers so serenely upon other men. 

 As might be expected, Goethe and Carlyle, 

 Euskin and Watts and Stevenson, to say 

 nothing of Kant, fare badly; so do Owen and 

 Kelvin, Laveleye and Tylor and Weismann; 

 but even Comte, J. S. Mill and Bain fail to 

 escape the " predestinate scratched face." 

 Justly enough, Calderwood is convicted of " a 

 piece of poor fumbling," and Princetonians 

 will be charmed to know that McCosh's 

 soubriquet in his native country (McBosh) is 

 recalled with glee. George Eliot and Victor 

 Carus come through the ordeal unscathed; 

 while of Alexander Smith it is said, "I am 

 strongly inclined to rank him as the greatest 

 poet since Shakespeare " ! Neither Tennyson 

 nor Browning, let alone Arnold, merits similar 

 commendation. Plainly, the conflict of the 

 age has determined these curious phenomena 

 quite as much as personal bias. 



No less interesting and symptomatic is 

 Spencer's relation to Facliarheit. The enemy 

 has affirmed in many shapes, " scratch Spencer 

 and you find ignorance." It were superfluous 

 to comment upon this cynicism. But it so 

 happens that certain facts, full of intimation, 

 do make their appearance, and serve to cast 

 light upon not a few matters. As concerns 

 what we mean by the English term " science," 

 Spencer took care to consult with authorities. 

 Consequently, even Darwin is able to write, " I 

 was fairly astonished at the prodigality of 

 your original views." He sought counsel con- 

 stantly with Huxley and Tyndall; when he 

 dealt with individual ethics, he " solicited the 

 criticisms of married lady friends on whose 

 judgment he could rely"; when preparing for 

 a new edition of the " Principles of Biology," 

 in 1895, he " ordered copies to be interleaved 



and sent to young biologists, recommended as 

 being familiar with the recent developments 

 of the science " ; en questions of physics and 

 geology he referrsd to Clerk Maxwell, Kelvin, 

 Judd and numerous other experts; when he 

 desired information re statistics, he applied 

 to Sir E. Giffen, and so on. But, then, he 

 aimed to rank as a philosopher, not as a sci- 

 entific leader. What of philosophy, and phi- 

 losophers, we therefore ask? Mirdbile dictu, 

 he knew little of Plato, nothing of Aristotle; 

 of Bacon, the '' Essays " alone ; of Hobbes, 

 not much; of Locke, nothing; of Bentham 

 and Paley, only their most general doctrines, 

 noised abroad by the man in the street; of 

 Kant, nothing ; of Mill he read the " Logic," 

 but recorded no more than an attack upon one 

 of its doctrines; Hamilton and Mansel aside, 

 he seems to have been blind or indifferent to 

 the whole movement since Kant; for instance, 

 his single communication to its leading Eng- 

 lish exponent is a letter on a burning question 

 of party politics ! He repudiated expressly all 

 knowledge of Indian philosophy; and, al- 

 though he was an authority on the philosophy 

 of education, he avers that he never read 

 " Emile." Further, he seems rather proud 

 that he possessed slight philosophical equip- 

 ment; and yet, he does not protest when 

 friends baptize him " the greatest living phi- 

 losopher," indeed, one can only infer that he 

 took them au pied de la lettre. These ex- 

 traordinary contradictions are explicable in 

 one way, so far as I am capable of seeing. 

 Spencer was a V erstandsmensch and did not 

 know it. It is amusing to find him cling 

 again and again to the outworn eighteenth 

 century standpoint (e. g., I., 232, 235 f., 287, 

 301, 304; II., 3, Y9, 191, 201) and, at the same 

 time, characterize modfirn idealism as " old- 

 world nonsense." The old-world nonsense 

 nestled between his own covers, despite his 

 evolutionism. As Ferri pointed out, he did 

 not draw the conclusions which evolution war- 

 rants, and thus in philosophy, as in other 

 things, he stood rather aside from the main 

 current of his time. Epistemology and logic 

 failed to touch him, and he never attempted 

 the deeps of constructive metaphysics. His 

 constitutional aversion to criticism, and even 



