CHAPTER II 
HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903) 
Cosmic EvoLutrion 
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 Auguste 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. 
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