878 



SCIENCE. 



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



times with apparent sei'iousness, usually by 

 scholarly writers employed for the purpose. 

 Even spec'ialists can always be hired to 

 write books down. 



Mr. Spencer found that the sale of his 

 books was being seriously interfered with 

 through hostile reviews. Professor Bain, 

 who was one of the subscribers, told John 

 Stuart Mill that for a long time he did not 

 read 'First Principles,' saying "that the 

 impression gained from notices of it had 

 deterred him. He went on to say that 

 when, subsequently, he read the book he 

 found to his astonislmient that the reviews 

 had not given him the remotest conception 

 of its contents." It was, therefore, de- 

 cided to send no more copies to the press, 

 and this policy was adhered to until near 

 the end of the work. After it had been 

 fairly tested it was found on examining the 

 accounts that the sales had about doubled. 



As already remarked, Mr. Spencer was 

 now beholden to no man and could devote 

 all his energies to his great task. But he 

 was destined to become a slave to a worse 

 master than any superior officer. He was 

 to become the victim of an insidious dis- 

 ease, a disease which proved incurable, and 

 which attacked precisely the organ of which 

 he had the greatest need— his brain. It 

 began with insomnia, and was always at- 

 tended with insomnia, but it soon threat- 

 ened complete prostration, and from his 

 thirty-fifth year to the end of his life it 

 was one constant struggle for health. But 

 it was not a fatal disease, as he lived well 

 into his eighty-fourth year, and, as he says, 

 it was not a painful disease, and, like most 

 forms of neurasthenia, it did not show in 

 his face, so that people always supposed 

 him younger than he was. But it rendered 

 continuous attention to anything whatever 

 impossible. His work must henceforth be 

 done at short sessions with long intervals 

 of rest. There were sometimes days, weeks 

 and even months that he could do nothing. 



In the pursuit of health he traveled much 

 and resorted to all forms of amusement. 

 Fishing was his favorite pastime, but he 

 often took long pedestrian journeys. 



He must have been a very poor observer. 

 It would seem that he had subordinated 

 and practically sacrificed his perceptive to 

 his reflective faculties. With even the 

 little dips into entomology, botany and 

 geology that he had made in his early life, 

 one would suppose that he would have seen 

 more in the world. But he rarely men- 

 tions any object in natural history. It is 

 very disappointing to read his account of 

 walks, for example, round the Isle of 

 Wight. He does, indeed, mention the 

 chalk, but he never mentions the far more 

 interesting Wealden formation, and seems 

 to have had no idea of the geology of that 

 island. It was the same with his visits to 

 the' Yorkshire coast and other places cele- 

 brated for their geological interest. But 

 he observed men and human operations, 

 and usually criticizes everything severely. 

 Nothing in art, ancient or modern, came 

 up to his ideal. 



Herbert Spencer, as all know, never mar- 

 ried, and it seems certain that his celibacy 

 was the result of a reasoned resolve to let 

 nothing interfere with his main purpose. 

 But it is evident from reading his 'Auto- 

 biography' that he was not lacking in any 

 of the qualities that would have made 

 family life successful. He often alludes 

 to it as a good that he was compelled to 

 forego. His views of women were of the 

 most enlightened kind, and the ideal of 

 marriage that he sets forth in a letter to 

 a friend about to marry is as perfect and 

 noble as it is possible to conceive of. There 

 are doubtless many readers for whom the 

 most interesting part of his 'Autobiog- 

 raphy' wiU be that which treats of his 

 relations with George Eliot, although, so 

 far as can be judged either from this work 

 or from the 'Life and Letters of George 



