Or else, to take another striking example, he loudly raised his voice against State interference with the life of society; he even gave to one of his works a title representing in itself a whole revolutionary programme: "The Man versus the State." But little by little, under cover of safeguarding the protective functions of the State, he entirely reconstructed the State as it exists to-day, with but few very timid limitations.
These contradictions and many others besides could, of course, be explained by the fact that Spencer planned the sociological part of his philosophy under the influence of the English Radical movement of the "forties," long before he had written that part which dealt with natural sciences. In fact, he published his "Social Statics" in 1851, that is to say, when the anthropological study of human institutions was still in its infancy. But, be it as it may, the result was that, like Comte, Spencer did not undertake the study of human institutions as a naturalist, for their own sake, without preconceived ideas borrowed from other domains, outside science.
Moreover, as soon as he reached the philosophy of societies—that is, Sociology—Spencer began to adopt a new method, and a very treacherous one: the method of resemblances, or analogies, which he evidently did not resort to in his study of the facts of physical nature. The consequence was that this method allowed him to justify a mass of preconceived ideas. Altogether, up till now we have not yet a synthetic philosophy that would have been built up on the same foundation for both natural and sociological sciences.
It must also be said that for the comprehension of the primitive institutions of the savages—which represent a substantial portion of all Sociology—Spencer was the least suited man. In this respect he even exaggerated a failing that is frequent with Englishmen: a want of understanding for the morals and customs of other nations.—"We English are Roman Law people, while the Irish are Common Law people; that is why we do not understand one another," I was told once by James Knowles, a very intelligent and well-informed man.—The misunderstanding is still greater when an Englishman has to deal with those who are described as "inferior races." This was Spencer's case. He was quite incapable of understanding the savage's respect for his tribe and tribe-rule; or the hero of an Icelandic saga, who considers "blood revenge" as a holy duty; or the inner life of a mediaeval city, which, though it was full of
