Spencer Perceval

“ Notwithstanding that he had the assistance in the cabinet of no statesman of the first rank, he succeeded in retaining office till he was shot by a man named Bellingham, a bankrupt with a grievance, who had vainly applied to him for redress, in the lobby of the House of Commons on the 11th of May 1812. Bellingham was certainly insane, but the plea was set aside and he was hanged. Perceval was a vigorous debater, specially excelling in replies, in which his thorough mastery of all the details of his subject gave him a great advantage. ”

“ The career of Lord Spencer presents few materials to the biographer, for he had neither the brilliant nor even plausible exterior which interests and captivates vulgar imaginations, but he had sterling qualities of mind and character which made him one of the most useful and valuable, as he was one of the best and most amiable men of his day. ”

“ And see, boy dear!—with all the force of my conviction that things should be otherwise, yet I am reasonable. I don't ask to see Spencer, or to have an active hand in his redemption. I realize that the time for that has passed, and that you are just in saying that he must come to me, not I to him—and come to me another than the man he is to-day. Anything else is impossible: that I see and accept. But the hideous fact remains. A man who loved me once, who offered me all that a man can offer a woman, is walking [Pg 58] the streets of Kenton City, cold, hungry, homeless—a beggar! ”

“ Spencer’s strong personality, his complete devotion to a self-imposed and life-long task, together with rare gleams of tenderness visible amidst a wilderness of abstract thought, have left a unique impression on my mind that years fail to weaken. ”

“ When Sir Percivale saw that he would not turn, he threw himself on the ground, and cast away his helm and sword, and bemoaned himself for the most unhappy of all Knights; and there he abode the whole day, and, being faint and weary, slept till it was midnight. And at midnight he waked and saw before him a woman, who said to him right fiercely, 'Sir Percivale, what doest thou here?' 'Neither good nor great ill,' answered he. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The highest development of this psychical life is the end for which the world exists. The object of social life is the highest spiritual welfare of the individual members of society. The individual human soul thus comes to be as much the centre [Pg 48] of the Spencerian world as it was the centre of the world of mediæval theology; and the history of the evolution of conscious intelligence becomes a theme of surpassing interest.
This is the part of his subject which Mr. Spencer has handled in the most masterly manner. ”

“ These were the friends—few but faithful—amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes. But if there was any tremor in him as he stood up in surroundings so trying, I was unable to detect it. Indeed, at the moment he rose, there was something very fine and very impressive in his figure. He is, as most people know, a man of unusual height; hard exercise and the ride across country have kept him from having any of that tendency to embonpoint which destroys in middle age so many a fine figure. ”

“ Then Sir Percydes said: "Dear friend, when thou desireth to find that damosel to whom belongeth the ring, come thou to me and I will tell thee where thou mayst find her; yet I know not why thou dost not go and find her now."
Unto this Sir Percival made reply: "I do not seek her immediately because I am yet so young and so unknown to the world that I could not be of any credit to her should I find her; so first I will seek to obtain credit as a knight, and then I will seek her."
Sir Percydes said: "Well, Percival, I think thou hast great promise of a very wonderful knighthood. ”

“ And Percival said to himself: "Ha! how great is the world; I knew not that there were so many people in the world."
How Percival rode in the world.
But when the folk of that place beheld what sort of a saddle was upon the back of the pack-horse; and when they beheld what sort of armor it was that Percival wore--all woven of osier twigs; and when they beheld how he was armed with a javelin and with no other weapon, they mocked and laughed at him and jeered him. But Percival understood not their mockery, whereupon he said: "Lo! how pleasant and how cheerful is the world. ”

“ It was a grim unsmiling land, hard to like.
"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high, sharp, and ragged, in the distance—"but it looks to me as if He got tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished."
"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter, shortly.
As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival ”

“ But thought that involves the thinker in no kind of responsibility tends to be irresponsible; and though Spencer boasted that he “developed his ideas rationally”—so that he did not get wrinkled like inferior men “who think from the outside”—few men were in truth more under the dominion of prejudice; nearly everything he wrote on matters of human concern was influenced by the fact that he was excessively vain, timid, and self-indulgent. ”

“ My conscious mind was hammering away: "It isn't real. It isn't real. It won't hurt you. It's just your own imagination. You're becoming hypnotized. Break the spell. Look away."
I dragged my eyes from it, and my gaze fell full upon Spencer lying dead at my feet, on his back, his queer eyes seeming to strive to see his own forehead. With a sob, I stumbled across him, and gained the fireplace. I clung to the mantel-shelf, still keeping my gaze averted from the direction of the door. ”

“ Puss had no sooner been liberated than she bounded out at the open door. Spencer said hastily, “I believe the climate of England is too cold for Tippo; but I’ll fetch her back.” Upon this he darted out of the door, and down the stairs after the scared cat; and this was the way Spencer effected his escape. Of course, the audience tumbled to it that the whole concern was a swindle, but they “bore up” well, and even seemed satisfied with the swindle, for they had many good laughs out of it. Spencer joined me on the road just out of Haworth, and together we returned to Keighley. ”

“ When Percival came to that pavilion the Lady Yvette looked up and beheld him with great astonishment, and she said to herself: "That must either be a madman or a foolish jester who comes hither clad all in armor of wattled willow twigs." So she said to him, "Sirrah, what dost thou here?" He said, "Lady, is this a church?" Upon that she was angered thinking that he had intended to make a jest and she said: "Begone, fool, for if my father, who is King Pecheur, cometh and findeth thee here, he will punish thee for this jest." But Percival replied, "Nay; I think he will not, lady." ”

“ Neither suffered fools gladly, and each tended to be an outspoken judge of all the earth. But while Carlyle loved and hated intensely, Spencer judged callously. Carlyle was more like a human being, Spencer "made his heart wait on his judgment—indefinitely." "What is almost uncanny about Herbert Spencer is his triumphant superiority to natural instincts." "It is difficult for the average man to believe that Spencer was a human being of like passions with himself." ”

“ Spencer, whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently represented in thought, it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the ordinary philistine feels his security. ”

“ Did you never feel so?"
"No, never."
"If I had been buried on the Rocas Reef," said Percival, with biting emphasis, "you would have kept your promise, gone back to England, and—married Elizabeth."
"I never considered that possibility," answered Brian, with perfect quietness and some coldness.
"Then you're a better fellow than I am. Look here," said Percival, with vehemence, "in your place I could not have nursed a man through an illness as you have done. The temptation would have been too strong: I should have killed him." ”

“ From psychology we step to super-organic evolution in the Principles of Sociology (1876-1896) , which is probably regarded by the majority as the most characteristic part of the Spencerian philosophy. It is certainly one of the most interesting; for it combines in an unusual measure the best results of ancient thought with full justice to modern individualism. Mr. Spencer is a consistent individualist, but a far-sighted one. He sees that ‘the survival of the fittest,’ and with it progress, are impossible unless ‘the fittest’ both wins and keeps advantage to himself. ”

“ But he was no abstract idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to truth and justice as he saw them, who had deep insights, and who finished, under terrible frustrations from bad health, a piece of work that taken for all in all, is extraordinary. A human life is greater than all its possible appraisers, assessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well as a decidedly graceless thing. ”

“ I lay back in my chair with half-closed eyes, pondering on the dreams and visions of the illustrious people Spencer had listed. I was a writer of sorts—an artist in my own particular line, I prided myself—but I had no illusions about my name living any longer than I did. A hundred years hence no one would be the slightest bit interested to learn that I had died in a mad-house or had regular bouts of delirium tremens. ”

“ In the vast reading public of America they are far more widely known and esteemed than even in our own country. At his death the journals, the lecture halls, the pulpits of Christendom resounded with accounts of his life and work. In no nation had a deeper impression been made, we are told by an eminent native disciple, than in Japan. The Sociology has been translated into Chinese. Churches, Chapels, Synagogues, Ethicists, Secularists and Positivists, hailed Spencer as a leading philosopher of his time. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A wealthy nobleman of manly character, commanding presence, and engaging manners, Spencer was soon a prominent and popular figure in society. At Spencer House in London and at Althorp Park, his Northamptonshire seat, he soon exercised magnificent hospitality. Devoted to sport, he was an admirable horseman. Through life he rode about London on business or social errands, and he was thrice master of the Pytchley hounds. In shooting, too, he always took a lively interest, largely with an eye to national needs. ”

“ With the utmost respect for Spencer's services as a path-breaker for positivism, all but the few for whom we have made allowance realize that his chief significance at present is as a factor in the evolution of thought, not as an authority for present thinking. In other words, even those of us who have profited most by following Spencer through his solution of his problems, must be painfully aware that for men now in their formative years Spencer is largely archaeology. ”

“ No man ever more entirely fulfilled the maxim of the French poet, which another philosopher took for his favourite device: 'What is it that makes a great life? It is the ideal of youth carried out in mature age.' It is thus that, almost alone of modern philosophers, Herbert Spencer achieved all that he purposed, and perhaps all that he was capable of completing. ”

“ Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and look over the situation. No, the clerk need n’t call the boy. He would carry up his suit-case, himself; it was rather heavy.
Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phœnix that arose from Jimmy Valentine’s ashes—ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alterative attack of love—remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and secured a good run of trade.
Socially he was also a success, and made many friends. And he accomplished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and became more and more captivated by her charms. ”