CHAPTER II 



HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903) 



Cosmic Evolution 



As the naturalistic philosophy of eighteenth-century France and 

 the social enthusiasm of the early nineteenth century were 

 strangely fused in the life and social philosophy of Augusta Comte, 

 so the England of Sir William Hamilton, Adam Smith, Lyell, 

 Watts, and Shaftesbury, — the England at once scientific, in- 

 dustrial, moral and religious, found expression in the life and 

 Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. To appreciate his 

 theories of evolution and adaptation one needs to understand the 

 unfolding of his life and thought and this is revealed in his pub- 

 lished autobiography and letters with a frankness and keenness 

 of self-analysis that is illuminating. 



The son of an English school-master, of a line of non-conform- 

 ist ancestors, breathing from earliest days the atmosphere of 

 intellectual and religious freedom and himself taught to question, 

 to observe, and to reason, Spencer grew up through boyhood a 

 student of nature, a questioner, a seeker after causes in a law- 

 abiding order. 



An only child, left much to the companionship of his own 

 thoughts, he became a dreamer. Allowed to have his own way, 

 and deprived of the opportunity of developing his social nature 

 normally through play with other children, when in youth he did 

 mingle with others, he found the problem of social adjustment a 

 severe task, and out of this experience was born his theory of 

 moral compromise, — of rational adjustment between egoism and 

 altruism. He refused the opportunity of a university career and 

 turned to engineering where for several years he struggled along, 

 dividing his time between drawing, field-work, inventing, study, 

 and writing. 



