lution and perseverance much might still be looked for. And now the event has justified my half-doubtful prediction, and the Synthetic Philosophy has been rounded off to a completed whole.
Of the importance of this finished work as a fact in the intellectual annals of the nineteenth century much might, of course, be said. That it is in itself the largest, most comprehensive, and most ambitious plan conceived and wrought out by any single thinker of our time is obvious to all; nor will it be less obvious to those who concern themselves in any way with the progress of thought that, measured alike by the constructive genius manifested in, and the far-reaching influence exerted by it, the Synthetic Philosophy towers superbly above all other philosophic achievements of the age. There is no field of mental activity that Mr. Spencer has not to some extent made his own; no line of inquiry in which his power has not been felt. Even those who differ the most radically from him are at the same time compelled to define their positions in relation to his arguments and conclusions, while his speculations constitute a common point of departure for the most curiously divergent developments of thought. To write the history of opinion in regard to his work would indeed be scarcely less than to write the history of biology, psychology, sociology, ethics, and political theory during the past thirty years. But it would be trite and therefore needless to dwell here on all these facts. It will be more to the point to seize the occasion offered by the closing of the Synthetic series to speak a little of the career and personality of the philosopher, and to outline in the broadest possible way some of the underlying principles of his organized system of thought.
The chief matters of importance in Herbert Spencer's externally uneventful life are by this time sufficiently well known to demand no more than the briefest recapitulation. Born in Derby, England, on the 27th of April, 1820, he came of a stock in which intellectual integrity, fearlessness, and independence were strongly pronounced characteristics. His father was by profession a teacher, holding views, however, of the aims and methods of education greatly in advance of the average scholastic theories of his time. It has been commonly said that it was owing largely to the child's precarious health that he was permitted to grow into boyhood without being subjected to the mental cramming and coercion then so much in vogue. The truth of the matter, however, is that he was not particularly delicate in early years, and that his father's wiser course of procedure was simply the result of experience, and of a dread of overtaxing the immature mind by the ordinary forcing system, to which he was totally
