June 10, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



877 



decided to issue the work in parts by sub- 

 scription. In one of the appendices to the 

 'Autobiography' appears the list of orig- 

 inal subscribers. We may judge of the 

 backing that he had, even at the outset, by 

 the following names that are found among 

 others in that list: John Stuart Mill, 

 Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Sir 

 Charles Lyell, Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir 

 John Herschel, Professor De Morgan, 

 George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, Charles 

 Kingsley, George Grote, Alexander Bain, 

 Henry T. Buckle, Jules Simon. 



It is interesting to compare the original 

 draft with the final draft of the prospectus 

 of Mr. Spencer's system. Aside from the 

 difficulty of explaining why he called both 

 parts of Vol. I. ('First Principles') the 

 'Unknowable' in the former, while Part II. 

 in the latter deals with the 'Knowable, ' 

 there is the fact that in the original draft 

 he makes Part III. treat of 'Astronomic 

 Evolution' and Part IV. of 'Geologic Evo- 

 lution,' these being the 'two volumes' that 

 were wholly omitted in the completed sys- 

 tem. As this original draft was never be- 

 fore published the world was left practi- 

 cally in the dark as to what these volumes 

 would have contained had they been writ- 

 ten. In the explanatory note inserted in 

 the preface to 'First Principles' (p. xiv) 

 he simply states that the application of 

 these principles to inorganic nature is 

 omitted, but this gives no intimation as to 

 how this application would have been made. 

 He does, indeed, refer in at least two other 

 places to these omitted volumes ('Prin- 

 ciples of Biology,' Vol. I., Appendix, pp. 

 479, 480; 'Principles of Sociology,' Vol. I., 

 p. 3), and in the second of these he says 

 that one of the volumes would have dealt 

 with 'Astrogeny' and the other with 'Geog- 

 eny. ' These appear to be the only hints 

 that he gave out on this point, and few 

 readers probably ever noticed them. But 

 in one of his letters written in 1895 he 



entered much more fully into this subject 

 and set forth clearly just what his whole 

 system would have been had it been fully 

 written out.* 



The rest of the 'Aiitobiography' deals 

 mainly with the execution of this great 

 scheme, which need not be followed out. 

 There are, however, many incidental mat- 

 ters connected with the chief matter, and 

 some not connected with it, that have a 

 special interest. Only a few of these can 

 be mentioned. One of these relates to the 

 reception that Mr. Spencer's books met 

 with at the hands of the public. Nothing 

 certainly is more annoying to a writer on 

 philosophical subjects than the reviews of 

 his books. As Spencer says, "adverse 

 criticisms of utterly unjust kinds frequent- 

 ly pursue the conscientious writer. * * * 

 Careless misstatements and gross misrepre- 

 sentations continually exasperate him." 

 He finally discovered that reviews do more 

 harm than good. An author is lucky if no 

 attention is paid to his books, for it is far 

 better to be ' smothered with silence ' than to 

 be willfully or ignorantly misrepresented. 

 A reviewer who has not the caliber to un- 

 derstand a book, but who must, neverthe- 

 less, review it because it is sent to the press, 

 will usually indulge in cheap flings at it 

 and apply to it damaging epithets calcu- 

 lated to deter readers from examining it. 

 If it seems radical or opposed to current 

 ideas it will arouse 'offended prejudices' 

 or call down the odium theologicum. 

 Everybody knows how Darwin's works 

 were treated by the religious press. Then 

 there is the subsidized press, which main- 

 tains a strict censorship over the contem- 

 porary literature, more effective in some 

 respects than that of despotic governments, 

 and every book that is suspected of being 

 at all 'dangerous' is attacked by the lead- 

 ing joiTrnals, sometimes with ridicule, some- 



* See Science, N. S., Vol. III., February 21, 

 1896, p. 294; 'Pure Sociology,' pp. 67-69. 



