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SOCIOLOGY. 
other accidental causes have not made acquaintance Avith Mr. Herbert 
Spencer’s writings, have sometimes acquired a prejudice against them. 
Was noble man but made ignoble talk. 
He makes no friend who never made a foe.— Tennyson. 
To use an illustration of his own : “ While yet in its nurse’s arms, 
the infant, by hiding its face and crying at the sight of a stranger, 
shows the dawning instinct to attain safety by flying from that which 
is unknown and may be dangerous.” That illustration, which is 
doubtless very applicable to later life, is, as you are aware, from the 
“ Education,” and I venture to think that if we followed the example 
of our French neighbours and printed that Essay alone for gratuitous 
distribution many lives would be annually saved, and that there is not 
a single person of average intelligence who reads it but would in some 
way derive benefit from it. Whether we admit it or reject it, it cannot 
be doubted that Mr. Herbert Spencer’s writings are acquiring a 
wonderful influence in this country, on the Continent, and in America. 
Scarcely a newspaper or magazine can be taken up but there appears 
an article which borrows force from his deductions or quotes one of 
his aphorisms on the doctrine of evolution. “ The adaptation of 
the organism to its environment”—the “egoism and the altruism” 
—that wonderful description which he gives of life as “ the definite 
combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 
successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and 
sequences ”—or simpler, “ the adjustment of internal to external 
relations”—are familiar in our mouths as household words. If time 
were not important I should be glad to quote from “ First Principles ” 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s views on Keligion and Science—from the 
“Social Statics” his views on progress, and from the “Study of 
Sociology ” his views on government. But these are, of course, well 
known to most of the members of this Section. 
Of the Synthetic Philosophy, that vast system which, com¬ 
mencing with “ first principles”—the knowable and the unknowable— 
carries its students through the principles of Biology, Psychology, 
Sociology, and Morality (which last and greatest work of all— 
a portion of which only, “ The Data of Ethics,” has as yet 
been published—we most fervently trust its learned and gifted 
author may live to accomplish), gives a rational conception 
of the Cosmos, and applies the doctrine of evolution to all 
the phenomena, organic and inorganic, which go to build up our 
planet, time also allows me only just to allude to generally ; but 
I think I may paraphrase the words of Mr. Alfred Eussel Wallace 
applied to the author of the “Origin of Species,” and say, “ that if 
other principles should hereafter be discovered, or if it be proved 
lhat some of his subsidiary theories are wholly or partially erroneous, 
this very discovery can only be made by following in his (Mr. Herbert 
Spencer’s) steps, by adopting the method of research which he has 
taught us, and by largely using the rich store of material which he 
has collected.”* 
“Tropical Nature and other Essays,” by Alfred Russel Wallace, p. 253. 
London : Macmillan and Co., 1879. 
