Herbert Spencer

“ What Biography is to Anthropology, History is to Sociology—History, I mean, as commonly conceived. The kind of relation which the sayings and doings, that make up the ordinary account of a man's life, bear to an account of his bodily and mental evolution, structural and functional, is like the kind of relation borne by that narrative of a nation's actions and fortunes its historian gives us, to a description of its institutions, regulative and operative, and the ways in which their structures and functions have gradually established themselves. ”

“ This awe of power, by the help of which social subordination has been, and still is, chiefly maintained—this feeling which delights to contemplate the imposing, be it in military successes, or be it in the grand pageantries, the sounding titles, and the sumptuous modes of living that imply supreme authority—this feeling which is offended by outbreaks of insubordination, and acts or words of a disloyal kind; is a feeling that inevitably generates delusions respecting governments, their capacities, their achievements. ”

“ But, preserving our gravity, we have simply to recognize the obvious truth that Humanity has no corporate consciousness whatever. Consciousness, known to each as existing in himself, is ascribed by him to other beings like himself, and, in a measure, to inferior beings; and there is not the slightest reason for supposing that there ever was, is now, or ever will be, any consciousness among men save that which exists in them individually. If, then, "the Great Being, who is the Author of all these conquests," is unconscious, the emotions of veneration and gratitude are absolutely irrelevant. ”

“ Even in the seemingly most uniform and universal law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible? Is there not in Nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force against force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of results? Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other law, so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall be for an indefinite time utterly defeated? The law of gravity is immutable enough: but do all stones veritably fall to the ground? Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. ”

“ To cut himself off in thought from all his relationships of race, and country, and citizenship—to get rid of all those interests, prejudices, likings, superstitions, generated in him by the life of his own society and his own time—to look on all the changes societies have undergone and are undergoing, without reference to nationality, or creed, or personal welfare; is what the average man cannot do at all, and what the exceptional can do very imperfectly. ”

“ If, by philosophy, we understand the deepest explanation of things that is possible to the human mind, the principle of genesis or Evolution certainly answers preeminently to this character; for what explanation can go deeper than that which accounts for the origin, continuance, and disappearance of the changing objects around us? It is the newest solution of the oldest problem; a solution based alike upon the most extended knowledge, and upon a reverent recognition that all human investigation, however extensive, must have its inexorable bounds. ”

“ Is it not a folly to go on pretending to ourselves and others that we believe certain perpetually-repeated maxims of entire self-sacrifice, which we daily deny by our business activities, by the steps we take to protect our persons and property, by the approval we express of resistance against aggression? Is it not a dishonesty to repeat, in tones of reverence, maxims which we not only refuse to act out, but dimly see would be mischievous if acted out? Every one must admit that the relation between parent and child is one in which altruism is pushed as far as is practicable. ”

“ If we remember that history has been full of the doings of kings, but that only in quite recent times have the phenomena of industrial organization, conspicuous as they are, attracted any attention—if we remember that, while all eyes and all thoughts have been turned to the actions of rulers, no eyes and no thoughts have, until modern days, been turned to those vital processes of spontaneous coöperation by which natural life, and growth, and progress, have been carried on—we shall not fail to see how profound have been the resulting errors in men's conclusions about social affairs. ”

“ I may not take summary measures to resist encroachment, to reclaim my own, or to seize that which I bargained to have for my services: you tell me that I must demand your aid to enforce my claim. But demanding your aid commonly brings such frightful evils that I prefer to bear the wrong done me. So that, practically, having forbidden me to defend myself, you fail to defend me. By this my life is vitiated along with the lives of citizens in general. All transactions are impeded; time and labor are lost; the prices of commodities are raised. Honest men are defrauded, and rogues thrive. ”

“ The belief that truly good legislation and administration can go along with a humanity not truly good, is a chronic delusion. While our own form of government, giving means for expressing and enforcing claims, is the best form yet evolved for preventing aggressions of class upon class, and of individuals on one another, yet it is hopeless to expect from it, any more than from other forms of government, a capacity and a rectitude greater than those of the society out of which it grows. ”

“ In early life we have been taught that human nature is everywhere the same. Led thus to contemplate the beliefs of savages as beliefs entertained by minds like our own, we marvel at their strangeness, and ascribe perversity to those who hold them. Casting aside this error, we must substitute for it the truth that the laws of thought are everywhere the same, and that, given the data as known to him, the inference drawn by the primitive man is the reasonable inference.
In the sky, clear a few moments ago, the savage sees a fragment of cloud which grows while he gazes. ”

“ Once more, what shall we say of the laissez-faire which cries out because the civil administration of justice costs us £800,000 a year—because to protect men's rights we annually spend half as much again as would build an iron-clad!—because to prevent fraud and enforce contracts we lay out each year two-thirds of the sum our largest distiller pays in spirit-duty!—what, I ask, shall we say of the laissez-faire which thus thinks it an extravagance that one-hundredth part of our national revenue should go in maintaining the vital condition to national well-beings? ”

“ A spectator who, seeing a bubble floating on a great river, had his attention so absorbed by the bubble that he ignored the river—nay, even ridiculed any one who thought that the river out of which the bubble arose and into which it would presently elapse, deserved recognition, would fitly typify a disciple of M. Comte, who, centering all his higher sentiments on Humanity, holds it absurd to let either thought or feeling be occupied with that great stream of Creative Power, unlimited in Space or in Time, of which Humanity is a transitory product. ”

“ On remembering the eagerness for public applause and the dread of public disgrace which stimulate and restrain men, we can not question that the diffused manifestations of feeling habitually dictate their careers when their immediate necessities have been satisfied. It requires only to contemplate the social code which regulates life down even to the color of an evening necktie, and to note how those who dare not break this code have no hesitation in smuggling, to see that an unwritten law enforced by opinion is more peremptory than a written law not so enforced. ”

“ So that, beginning with the germinal idea of mystery which the savage gets from a display of power in another transcending his own, and the germinal sentiment of awe accompanying it, the progress is toward an ultimate recognition of a mystery behind every act and appearance, and a transfer of the awe from something special and occasional to something universal and unceasing.
No one need expect, then, that the religious consciousness will die away, or will change the lines of its evolution. ”

“ Hiding the tools and spoiling the work of those who do not conform to their unreasonable customs, prove how little individual freedom is respected among them. And still more conspicuously is this proved by the internal governments of their trade-combinations. Not to dwell on the occasional killing of men among them, who assert their rights to sell their labor as they please, or on the frequent acts of violence and intimidation committed by those on strike against those who undertake the work they have refused, it suffices to cite the despotism exercised by trades-union officers. ”

“ In a word, I maintain Spencer's position as a thinker to be this: taking a view of Nature that was not only generally discredited, but was virtually foreclosed to research, he has done more than any other man to make it the starting-point of a new era of knowledge.
For the proof of this I now appeal to his works. Let us trace the rise and development of the conception of Evolution in his own mind, observe how he was led to it, and how he pursued it, and see how completely it pervades and unifies his entire intellectual career. ”

“ My conscience shows me that the feeble and the suffering must be helped; and, if selfish people won't help them, they must be forced by law to help them. Don't tell me that the milk of human kindness is to be reserved for the relations between individuals, and that governments must be the administrators of nothing but hard justice. Every man with sympathy in him must feel that hunger and pain and squalor must be prevented, and that, if private agencies do not suffice, then public agencies must be established. ”

“ If we take the highest product of evolution, civilized human society, and ask to what agency all its marvels must be credited, the inevitable answer is—To that Unknown Cause of which the entire Cosmos is a manifestation. ”

“ See, then, how the bias of patriotism indirectly produces erroneous views of the effects of an institution. Blinded by national self-love to the badness of our conduct toward inferior races, while remembering what there is of good in our conduct; forgetting how well these inferior races have usually behaved to us, and remembering only their misbehavior, which we refrain from tracing to its cause in our own transgressions; we overvalue our own natures as compared with theirs. ”

“ Were people's characters in Hobbes's day really so bad as to warrant his assumption that none would perform their covenants in the absence of a coercive power and threatened penalties? In our day "the names of just and unjust can have place" quite apart from recognition of any coercive power. Among my friends I could name half a dozen whom I would implicitly trust to perform their covenants without any "terror of some punishment"; and over whom the requirements of justice would be as imperative in the absence of a coercive power as in its presence. ”