Mr. Spencer

“ Blomfield's, and he may have induced Mr. Spencer to patronize it. When Mr. Spencer saw how well it worked in its department, he thought of a scheme for improvising something of his own. He does not give particulars {121} of what it was; but he submitted it to his Bishop, who "threw cold water on it," and Mr. Spencer simply thanks God for being thwarted. He is completely wrapped up in his clerical duties, so much so that he does not give the full time to his summer vacation in Ryde; he is always impatient to get back to his parish when some pressing business requires him to leave it ”

“ Spencer's cosmical system. Of the general value of this work as a philosopher we express no opinion. In the estimation of competent thinkers it is very great. Fiske, Youmans, Carveth Read, Ribot, Maudsley, Clifford, Sully, Grant Allen, Gopinay, and others are all working on Spencerian lines, but we do not understand that they accept the cosmical explanation of Mr. Spencer. He marks not the [Pg x] age of complete accomplishment but the age of transition. He has not grasped the solution of problems, but he has shewn the direction of future studies. ”

“ He therefore, at the beginning of 1898, took up his residence in Brighton, where he has a house looking upon the sea, and giving him the benefit of the flood of light which that place enjoys.
At present Mr. Spencer is able to give very little time to work, and being confined to the house most of the time, the routine of his daily life admits of little variety. His first business in the day is to hear the morning paper read; then he attends to his correspondence, and if well enough does a little work. If any matter is going through the press he will generally be seen with a proof close by. ”

“ Spencer's works. That completer living is to be attained by a multiplication of pleasurable satisfactions, and the perfected art of enjoyment was taught; for example, in his "Education," written twenty-five years ago, and the doctrine is at the basis of the "Data of Ethics," the most advanced treatise of his philosophical system. Mr. Spencer took up this cherished and long-familiar topic, in his New York address, simply because he was freshly and forcibly reminded of its importance by what he saw in this country. ”

“ I said. "She is determined to be a burden to no one. That is very proper."
Miss Spencer looked down on the ground again. "I must go and get the coffee," she said.
"Has the lady many pupils?" I asked.
"She has only Mr. Mixter. She gives all her time to him."
At this I could not laugh, though I smelt provocation; Miss Spencer was too grave. "He pays very well," she presently added, with simplicity. "He is very rich. He is very kind. He takes the Countess to drive." And she was turning away.
"You are going for the Countess's coffee?" ”

“ Spencer terms 'crude Realism,'
belief that the non-ego is per se extended, solid, even colored (if not resonant and odorous) . This is what common language implies; and the argument by which Mr. Spencer proves the relativity of feelings and relations, still more the subtile and complicated analysis by which he resolves our notion of extension into an aggregate of feelings and transitions of feeling, leads us away from our original simple belief—that, e. g., the green grass we see exists out of consciousness as we see it—just as much as the reasonings of Idealism, Skepticism, or Kantism. ”

“ To neither class does any reasoned-out theory of absolute morality yield any force of obligation or insight into the details of duty. And here it will be convenient to enquire whether Mr. Spencer himself attaches to absolute morality, any power as an ethical imperative. Absolute morality in Mr. Spencer's treatment is merely a conception of ideal conduct in an ideal state of society. ”

“ 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, we think, arrived nearer to a true philosophy than either Hamilton or Mansel. At least he has indicated in a more satisfactory manner than they have done, the positive datum of consciousness that the unconditioned, though inscrutable, exists. It may be said that Mr. Spencer is not chargeable with excluding God from the universe, or denying all revelation of Him in His works, since he earnestly defends the truth that an inscrutable power is shown to exist. ”

“ All that he has to say of Spencer’s life and character he says with admirable vigor. ... It has, indeed, every claim to be considered the best account of its kind as yet in existence. But when Mr Elliott leaves the narrative and comes to a critical statement of doctrine, the volume is of a different calibre. ... His epitome of Spencer’s teaching is not full enough to be useful and too full to be brief. ”

“ The Positivist produced by Evolution worships his Cause under the name of humanity, and works towards Mr. Spencer's evolutionist ideal. He seeks no justification in philosophy. The product of Evolution—he acts from inward impulse and requires no authority. He has none to appeal to in the inculcation of his worship, but the natural response to be found in the hearts of those who occupy the same intellectual and sympathetic position. But this is after all only a partial grasp of the fundamental problem of history. ”

“ Spencer's works are no less wonderful than his treatment of words. The mind is swept along by an indiscernable but mighty flow, and sometimes after mysterious disappearances of consecutiveness between volumes or chapters, we find ourselves landed in a satisfied but bewildered manner at a conclusion about which we cannot but wonder however we arrived there. ”

“ Barrett Wendell in his important "English Composition," since Mr. Spencer wrote; but the method of Spencer's expression of his principles reminds one of the tangled wood in which Dante languished before he met Beatrice.
There is no doubt that Mr. Spencer makes us think of writing as a science and art; his philosophy [Pg 237] of style is right enough. But while he provokes puzzled thought, he does no more. There is more meat in Robert Louis Stevenson's "A College Magazine" than in all the complications in style in the brochure of the idol of the eighties. ”

“ We conclude therefore that in so far as the Data of Ethics is an attempt to explain purposed actions and their ethical quality upon a philosophical method of the kind propounded by Mr. Spencer, namely, as included in a proper understanding of the cosmical process, and of the histories of the universe consequent upon a knowledge of the relations of its original factors—so far Mr. Spencer's work must be considered a failure. That there is much of real scientific value in the work under review, and much original insight and true apprehension of process, we hold to be true ”

“ Certain great laws have been established which are found equally true in all departments of nature, and these are made the foundation of his philosophy. The sublime idea of the Unity of the Universe, to which science has long been tending, Mr. Spencer has made peculiarly his own. Through the vast diversities of nature he discerns a oneness of order and method, which necessitates but one philosophy of being; the same principles being found to regulate the course of celestial movement, terrestrial changes, and the phenomena of life, mind, and society. ”

“ After thus magnifying the importance of his subject, he neither agrees nor disagrees, but discountenances Mr. Spencer's practices on prudential motives. He staves off the whole matter of doctrine, and talks about discipline.
The next quotation will be from a bishop. He very wisely and keenly observes:—
"Amidst a great deal that is excellent and of right spirit in your observations, there is a presumption and self-confident tone, which is altogether new in you, and in my opinion not very consistent with real humility. ”

“ It is high time that we should turn from the abstract consideration of Mr. Spencer's views, and test their efficiency by the great standard of good and evil—facts. The facts, bearing upon our subject, which the Journal gives up to this period of his life, the close of 1826, and beginning of the next year, may be summed up in few words. One old woman was the only one of whom he could say, "she seems fully established in religion;" and it is remarkable that this very person, Mrs. Wykes, became a Catholic later on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The prevalence of these narrow views has been unfavorable to the recognition of Mr. Spencer's work by a large class of the cultivators of science; and the more so, as he has been mainly occupied in the highest spheres of generalization. For this reason it is only by the comparatively small number of scientific men, who possess marked philosophic power, that his labors have been justly appreciated. ”

“ Nevertheless we are asked to conceive a state of perfect balance amongst a society composed of heterogeneous individuals in various stages of equilibration, and we are told that a proper and complete conception of this character would furnish us with a code of absolute morality. But it is quite clear that Mr. Spencer's utopian hypothesis is the outcome of hope springing from large human sympathies rather than a realisable future, affording an ethical imperative. ”

“ Spencer's translation, which appeared on the first of July, 1796, [9] was well received, especially as compared with Pye's. The Critical Review of July, 1796, says:
Turning to the translation itself [as distinct from the designs] we find it faithful and spirited. In the latter part particularly, we think Mr. Spencer has clearly the advantage over his two competitors. Our readers will judge from the following extract— [gives last four stanzas, of which the last is]
The fiend horse snorts ”

“ Errors to be successful must be big and bold. Fallacies of reasoning are detected on a medium scale, but when they are "writ large" it is difficult to detect them. Trains of syllogisms are sometimes more effective because they are vast than because they are true. Let them be imposing in their language and grand in their proportions, we naturally bow down to power, even if it is only power of largeness. When dealing with Mr. Spencer's reasonings we feel a certain awe as if we were contradicting the forces of the universe—seemingly allied to him. ”

“ Spencer proceeds to use these inconceivable ideas as the basis of his philosophy. For mark, it is Space and Time as we know them, the actual and phenomenal Space and Time, to which all these inconceivabilities attach. Mr. Spencer's result ought, therefore, logically to be—Skepticism. What is his actual result? Ontology. And how so? Why, instead of rejecting Space and Time as the inconceivable things he has tried to demonstrate them to be, he
substitutes for them an Unknowable, a something which they really are, though we cannot know it, and rejects that, instead of them, from knowledge. ”

“ Neither do we so transgress when, by inductions from the history of man, we assert that the law of development of the subjective is towards altruistic sympathy, quantitative increase of life, and social harmony or equilibration. Mr. Matthew Arnold's recognition of "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" is as near an approach to the truth as we can get. Mr. Spencer's formula should be "an unknowable power, not ourselves, that makes towards equilibrium." ”

“ We would not be charged with the superfluity of commending to scholars the writings of Mr. Spencer. They have long ago found them out. It is to the mass of working men and women who make time for a solid book or two in the course of the year that we submit their claims. While those who have the leisure and training to realize Mr. Spencer's system as a developed unity must necessarily be few, no reader of tolerable intelligence can fail to find much of interest and suggestion in its several parts. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Having reached this stage in the unfolding of his ideas, Mr. Spencer began the writing of the "Principles of Psychology" in August, 1854. This is a work of great originality, and is important as marking the advance of Mr. Spencer's philosophical views at the time of its preparation. The whole subject of mind is dealt with from the Evolution point of view. The idea which runs through "Social Statics," that there is ever going on an adaptation between living beings and their circumstances, now took on a profounder significance. ”