1 82 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



this little book are being passed for press, there ar- 

 rives the third volume of the Principles of Sociology, 

 which completes Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philoso- 

 phy. In the preface to this, the venerable author 

 says: 



" On looking back over the six-and-thirty years 

 which I have passed since the, Synthetic Philos- 

 ophy was commenced, I am surprised at my 

 audacity in undertaking it, and .still more surprised 

 by its completion. In i860 my small resources had 

 been nearly all frittered away in writing and publish- 

 ing books which did not repay their expenses; and 

 I was sufifering under a chronic disorder, caused by 

 overtax of brain in 1855, which, wholly disabling 

 me for eighteen months, thereafter limited my work 

 to three hours a day, and usually to less. How in- 

 sane my project must have seemed to onlookers, 

 may be judged from the fact that before the first 

 chapter of the first volume was finished, one of my 

 nervous breakdowns obliged me to desist. 



" But imprudent courses do not always fail. 

 Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified by the event. 

 Though, along with other deterrents, many relapses, 

 now lasting for weeks, now for months, and once for 

 years, often made me despair of reaching the end, 

 yet at length the end is reached. Doubtless in 

 earlier years some exultation would have resulted; 

 but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my 

 chief pleasure is in my emancipation. Still there is 

 satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, dis- 



