874 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 493. 



an integral part of his life work. Whereas 

 his other works constitute his philosophy 

 of nature, his 'Autobiography' constitutes 

 his philosophy of life. It is a large work, 

 seriously written, costing him years of 

 labor. It Avas not written after his main 

 work was done as a closing retrospect to 

 his laborious life, but was executed in the 

 midst of his busiest days, while he was 

 hard at work on his ' Synthetic Philosophy. ' 

 It was begun, he tells us, in May, 1875, 

 i. e., while he was writing the first volume 

 of his 'Principles of Sociology,' and the 

 main portion of it was finished on his sixty- 

 ninth birthday, April 27, 1889, or Avhile he 

 was writing the first volume of his 'Prin- 

 ciples of Ethics. ' It is true that four years 

 later he wrote some ' Refiections, ' which 

 occupy the last sixty pages of the 'Auto- 

 biography,' in which some of the events of 

 that period are alluded to, but this is not, 

 like the rest, a chronological record. But 

 even if we place the conclusion of this work 

 at the year 1893, which is the date of the 

 second volume of the ' Principles of Ethics, ' 

 we find that it ended before the appearance 

 of either of the last two volumes of the 

 'Principles of Sociology,' although parts 

 of the second volume had been published. 

 The third volume bears date, 1897. There 

 were then still four years of activity after 

 the last word of the 'Autobiography' had 

 .been dictated before the conclusion of the 

 'Synthetic Philosophy.' He survived his 

 great work six years, and there are evi- 

 dences that he was by no means idle during 

 that time. In a letter dated May 4, 1897, 

 although he characterizes himself as a 

 'wreck,' still he speaks somewhat doubt- 

 fully of his ability to complete his "re- 

 maining task — revision of the 'Principles 

 of Biology.' " Why he did not bring his 

 'Autobiography' down to some such date, 

 or even later, has not yet been explained. 

 This work has done the important ser- 

 vice of dispelling a large amount of pop- 



ular error with regai'd to Herbert Spencer 's 

 life and career. The prevailing opinion 

 has been that he was a typically 'self-made 

 man. ' He has been represented as having 

 had to struggle with adversity, and has 

 been held up as a proof of the theory that 

 great abilities are certain to assert them- 

 selves whatever the obstacles may be in 

 their path. His life shows that, on the 

 contrary, he was highly favored by cir- 

 cumstances. While of course Avithout his 

 talents his achievements would have been 

 impossible, still, given such talents, there 

 was scarcely any reason why he should not 

 have accomplished great things. He does 

 not himself favor the Galtonian doctrine, 

 but fully recognizes his indebtedness to 

 circumstances. He admits that but for the 

 three legacies that were one after the other 

 left him by his two uncles and his father, 

 he could never have completed his system. 

 But he was even more indebted to the help 

 of influential friends, freely volunteered, 

 and by a whole train of favorable circum- 

 stances, fully set forth in his 'Autobiog- 

 raphy. ' Indeed, his very environment was 

 sufficient to bring out all that was in him. 

 On intimate terms for the greater part of 

 his life with such men as Huxley, Tyndall, 

 Hooker, Lubbock, Mill, Lewes and Bain, 

 belonging to the same clubs, taking long 

 Avalks, and having constant discussions with 

 them, the stimulus must have been enor- 

 mous. 



He enters quite elaborately into the ques- 

 tion of genealogy, and shows that his an- 

 cestors embodied extremely heterogeneous 

 elements, elements, as he maintains, calcu- 

 lated to implant in him most of the char- 

 acteristics that he possessed. To a ground- 

 work of immemorial English and a little 

 Scotch there was added a strain of the 

 French Huguenot, probably tinctured with 

 Bohemian Hussite protestantism. It must 

 not, however, be supposed that this ances- 

 tral heterogeneitv rendered him any the 



