John Spencer

“ In October 1848 he made a visitation of the Bahamas and went to Havannah some years later. He remained in Jamaica till 1856, when failing health compelled him to appoint a coadjutor. Returning to England, he settled at Torquay, where he died on 24 Feb. 1872.
Spencer married, on 14 July 1822, Eliza, daughter of John Musson, and left three daughters.
Spencer was the author of ‘Sermons on Various Subjects’ (1827) , ‘The Mourner Comforted’ (1845) , and a number of fugitive poems, some of which appeared in ‘Blackwood's Magazine’ (e.g. October 1837, p. 555) . ”

“ It is true that the sort of man Earl Spencer was—and he was once the ordinary type of great lord in politics—is still to be found, but you shall hardly find him in affairs. And he has, perhaps, a little coarsened; he has grown too horsey, and lost his old taste for things of the mind. Earl Spencer was Master of the Pytchley, and astonished John Morley by the zest with which he set out on a fourteen-mile drive to the meet on a pouring wet morning, after being up half the night talking politics. ”

“ Experience and Intuitions.—The history of psychology discloses a long drawn-out dispute between schools of "empiricists," who said "all our knowledge is derived from experience," and schools of "intuitionalists," who said, "Nay, but we have innate ideas or intuitions which transcend experience." A parallel dispute was long continued in regard to moral ideas. Between the disputants Spencer appeared as a peace-maker, and the reconciliation he proposed was in terms of evolution. We can best express it by a sentence from a letter to John Stuart Mill ”

“ He says that, "I never can for one moment admit that any one is more anxious for my happiness than I am myself, nor that any person has a greater right to decide than I have by what means that happiness shall be sought. A man's own conscientious judgment is the proper guide in such cases." He then refers Mr. Spencer to others more learned than he for the discussion of those matters, and mentions the Bishop of Chester and John Rose, "whose qualifications for the task are incomparably superior to mine." ”

“ Grandparents.—Spencer's maternal grandfather, John Holmes of Derby, was a business man and an active Wesleyan, with "a little more than the ordinary amount of faculty." The grandmother, née Jane Brettell, is described as "commonplace," but her portrait suggests a more charitable verdict. Spencer's paternal grandfather was a schoolmaster, a "mechanical teacher," somewhat oppressed by life, and "extremely tender-hearted." If, when a newspaper was being read aloud, there came an account of something cruel or very unjust, he would exclaim: "Stop, stop, I can't bear it!" ”

“ As a student in Egbert Benson's office, his remarkable industry impressed clients and teacher, but when his voice sounded the praises of John Jay, few could have anticipated that this young man, small in stature, vivacious in speech, quick in action, with dark eyes and a swarthy complexion, was destined to become one of the most famous jurists in a century. Ambrose Spencer had not yet scored his first political honour, but his herculean frame and statelyi. 56 presence, with eyes and complexion darker than Kent's, are to be seen leading in every political contest for more than forty years. ”

“ He looked at the handsomely furnished room and thought of the splendid old home. Then he deliberately surveyed himself in the mirror. He smiled:
“'Survival of the fittest'—yes, Spencer is right—a great—great mind. He is living now, and the world, of course, will not admit his greatness until he is dead. Life, like the bull that would rule the herd, is never ready to admit that other life is great. A poet is always a dead rhymester,—a philosopher, a dead dreamer. ”

“ Spencer and me is merely one of language; for neither of us (if I understand Mr. Spencer’s opinions rightly) believes an attribute to be a real thing, possessed of objective existence; we believe it to be a particular mode of naming our sensations, or our expectations of sensation, when looked at in their relation to an external object which excites them. The question raised by Mr. Spencer does not, therefore, concern the properties of any really existing thing, but the comparative appropriateness, for philosophical purposes, of two different modes of using a name. ”

“ Spencer himself at one time espoused the doctrine of the intuitive moralists, but it has gradually become clear to him that the qualifications required practically obliterate the doctrine as enunciated by them. It has become clear to him, in other words, that if among civilized folk the current belief is that a man who robs and does not repent will be eternally damned, while an accepted proverb among the Bilochs is, that "God will not favor a man who does not steal and rob," it is impossible to hold that men have in common an innate perception of right and wrong. ”

“ Spencer's opinion, the evidence here brought to a focus ought to dissipate once for all the belief in a moral sense, as commonly entertained. A long experience of mankind, however, prevents him from indulging in such an expectation. Among men at large, lifelong convictions are not to be destroyed either by conclusive arguments or multitudinous facts. Only to those who are not by creed or cherished theory committed to the hypothesis of a supernaturally created human species will the evidence above summed up prove that the human mind has no originally implanted conscience. ”

“ Of those who still adhere to the old opinions we need not speak; but when one of the most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers that English speculation has yet produced, full of the true scientific spirit, Mr Herbert Spencer, places in the front of his philosophy the doctrine that the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negative ”

“ Spencer is of opinion that because Socrates and Alcibiades are not the same man, the attribute which constitutes them men should not be called the same attribute; that because the humanity of one man and that of another express themselves to our senses not by the same individual sensations but by sensations exactly alike, humanity ought to be regarded as a different attribute in every different man. ”

“ Mr Spencer is one of the small number of persons who by the solidity and encyclopedical character of their knowledge, and their power of co-ordination and concatenation, may claim to be the peers of M. Comte, and entitled to a vote in the estimation of him. But after giving to his animadversions the respectful attention due to all that comes from Mr Spencer, we cannot find that he has made out any case. It is always easy to find fault with a classification. ”

“ Spencer has had for his primary purpose in the two volumes under review to show that, apart from any supposed supernatural basis, the principles of ethics have a natural basis. In these two volumes this natural basis is set forth, and its corollaries are elaborated. If the conclusions to which the general law of evolution introduces us are not in all cases as definite as might be wished, yet our author submits that they are more definite than those to which we are introduced by the current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected. ”

“ Spencer reminds us that in the far West of the United States, where every man carries his life in his hands and the usages of fighting are well understood, it is held that he is the real aggressor who first moves his hand toward his weapon. The application to the South African contest is obvious. In an essay on "Style," Mr. Spencer tells us that his own diction has been, from the beginning, unpremeditated. It has never occurred to him to take any author as a model. ”

“ Spencer considers to rest on the same basis; being chiefly those, or a part of those, which the metaphysicians of the Reid and Stewart school consider as truths of immediate intuition. That there exists a material world; that this is the very world which we directly and immediately perceive, and not merely the hidden cause of our perceptions; that Space, Time, Force, Extension, Figure, are not modes of our consciousness, but objective realities; are regarded by Mr. Spencer as truths known by the inconceivableness of their negatives. ”

“ Spencer has deductively shown that, by its lineage and its kindred, the evolution-hypothesis is as closely allied with the proved truths of modern science as is the antagonist hypothesis, that of special creation, with the proved errors of ancient ignorance. He has shown that, instead of being a mere pseud-idea, it admits of elaboration into a definite conception, so showing its legitimacy as an hypothesis. Instead of positing a purely fictitious process, the process which it alleges proves to be one actually going on around us. ”

“ Spencer means that the action of gravitation gives us no sensations, the assertion is one than which I have not seen, in the writings of philosophers, many more startling. What other sensation do we need than the sensation of one body moving toward another? “The elements of the representation” are not two bodies and an “agency,” but two bodies and an effect ”

“ Spencer agrees with me in considering axioms to be "simply our earliest inductions from experience." But he differs from me "widely as to the worth of the test of inconceivableness." He thinks that it is the ultimate test of all beliefs. He arrives at this conclusion by two steps. First, we never can have any stronger ground for believing anything, than that the belief of it "invariably exists." Whenever any fact or proposition is invariably believed ”

“ There have been those who have found fault with others for relying upon great names, but who have fallen into the very same error themselves—men who charge others with relying on a Pope, and yet stick up another themselves: who have got a Luther, a Calvin, a John Knox, or a Wesley, upon whom they pin their faith. ”

“ The inconceivableness of a supposition is the extreme case of its unbelievability. This is the very foundation of Mr. Spencer’s doctrine. The invariability of the belief is with him the real guarantee. The attempt to conceive the negative is made in order to test the inevitableness of the belief. It should be called, an attempt to believe the negative. When Mr. Spencer says that while looking at the sun a man can not conceive that he is looking into darkness, he should have said that a man can not believe that he is doing so. ”

“ Spencer looks for effectual progress towards that equilibrium between constitution and conditions,--between inner faculties and outer requirements,--implied by the final stage of human evolution. Adaptation to the social state, now perpetually hindered by anti-social conflict, may then go on unhindered; and all the great societies, in other respects differing, may become similar in those cardinal traits which result from complete self-ownership of the unit, and from exercise over him of nothing more than passive influence by the aggregate. ”

“ Spencer has himself suggested that, since the system of synthetic philosophy begins with a division entitled the "Unknowable," having for its purpose to show that all material phenomena are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge,--that "force as we know it can be regarded only as a Conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause"--there has been thereby afforded sufficiently decided proof of belief in something which cannot be held in the hands. ”

“ There needs but a continuance of absolute peace externally and a rigorous insistence on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men into a form naturally characterized by all the virtues. This general induction is re-enforced by especial induction. Now as displaying this high trait of nature, now as displaying that, Mr. Spencer has instanced various uncivilized peoples who, inferior to us in other respects, are morally superior to us. He has also pointed out that such peoples are, one and all, free from inter-tribal antagonisms. ”

“ Though occasionally it may prove an imperfect test, yet, as our most certain beliefs are capable of no better, to doubt any one belief because we have no higher guarantee for it, is really to doubt all beliefs." Mr. Spencer's doctrine, therefore, does not erect the curable, but only the incurable limitations of the human conceptive faculty, into laws of the outward universe. ”

“ It was contended in "Social Statics," as it is contended in the "Principles of Ethics," that harmonious social co-operation implies that limitation of individual freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements co-exist. Mr. Spencer's theory in 1850 was, as his theory still is, that the mental products of Sympathy which constitute what is called "the moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life ”

“ Spencer foresees that many will think this a wild imagination. Though everywhere around them are creatures with structures and instincts which have been gradually so moulded as to subserve their own welfares and the welfares of their species, yet the immense majority ignore the implication that human beings, too, have been undergoing in the past, and will undergo in the future, progressive adjustments to the lives imposed on them by circumstances. ”