June 10, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



879 



Eliot,' these relations were never in any 

 sense sentimental. But they were certainly 

 much more intimate and more prolonged 

 than any of her letters would lead us to 

 suppose. It is surprising to learn that it 

 was he chiefly who urged her to write fic- 

 tion, an idea which she could not at first 

 entertain. The 'Letters' leave the impres- 

 sion that it was Lewes who played this role. 

 Perhaps both equally saw in her this talent 

 before she saw it in herself. It is equally 

 surprising that she should have made 

 Spencer her confidant in the matter of the 

 authorship not only of her first stories, but 

 also of ' Adam Bede. ' It is to be regretted 

 that she, too, did not write an autobiog- 

 raphy. 



Such is a hasty glance at a few of the 

 salient points in the 'Autobiography' of 

 Herbert Spencer. No two persons would 

 select the same points, and no such glance 

 can hope to do justice to the work. Noth- 

 ing has been said of his inventions, which 

 were numerous but none of them important 

 or successful ; of his numerous essays, from 

 his 'Proper Sphere of Government' to his 

 'Factors of Organic Evolution'; of his 

 'Descriptive Sociology,' that monumental 

 but costly undertaking; of his 'cerebral 

 hygiene,' which, unlike that of Comte, con- 

 sisted in reading nothing that he did not 

 agree with, thus warping, as Comte had 

 dwarfed, the growth of ideas; of his more 

 extended travels, including his visit to 

 America, which latter is familiar to us all ; 

 nor of his persistent hostility to govern- 

 mental initiative {laissez faire), which 

 formed so prominent a feature in his po- 

 litical philosophy. 



With regard to this last it would seem 

 that owing to preconceptions of his youth 

 confirmed during his connection with the 

 Economist, he was unduly frightened by 

 the bugbear of collectivism, which is really 

 nothing but social integration, and a neces- 

 sary part of the very social evolution which 



he taught. For this must consist, as in 

 both inorganic and organic nature, of dif- 

 ferentiation and integration. His inability 

 to perceive this made his system, so broad 

 at its base, a frustum instead of a pyra- 

 mid. 



The 'Autobiography' is written in a 

 much more pleasing style than his other 

 works. It shows its author in all the sim- 

 plicity of true greatness. His life dfemon- 

 strates that he was a natural product of 

 his time. He lived at the acme of the Vic- 

 torian age, the grandest epoch in history, 

 and he was directly in touch with all the 

 powerful forces that characterized that 

 epoch. When we take into consideration 

 his own inherent powers we may say in 

 very truth that his life was 'a continuous 

 adjustment of internal relations to external 

 relations,' and that he was a normal prod- 

 uct of the laws of evolution that he ex- 

 pounded. Lestee F. Ward. 



Washington, I>. C. 



THE WORK OF THE YEAR 1903 IN 

 ECOLOGY* 

 An apology for this paper is necessary 

 and will be forthcoming. The task out- 

 lined in the title is by no means voluntary, 

 but has been imposed upon the speaker by 

 your relentless committee ; and this— as the 

 secretary will acknowledge— in spite of the 

 speaker's urgent protest. It is always im- 

 possible to give a critical summary of cur- 

 rent events, because all of us are afflicted 

 with the disease of contemporary blindness. 

 It is more than impossible to do such a task 

 for the field of ecology, since the field of 

 ecology is chaos. Ecologists are not agreed 

 even as to fundamental principles or mo- 

 tives; indeed, no one at this time, least of 

 all the present speaker, is prepared to de- 

 fine or delimit ecology. It is, therefore, a 



* Kead by invitation of the sectional com- 

 mittee, Section G, American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, at the St. Louis meeting, 

 December 29, 1903. 



