tual aid.[1] "Unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature that eventually, sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to all."[2] The sense of duty which is the echo of generations of compulsion to social behavior, will then disappear; altruistic actions, having become instinctive through their natural selection for social utility, will, like every instinctive operation, be performed without compulsion, and with joy. The natural evolution of human society brings us ever nearer to the perfect state.
The intelligent reader, in the course of this brief analysis,[3] will have perceived certain difficulties in the argument, and will need no more than some scattered reminders as to where the imperfections lie. Negative criticism is always unpleasant, and most so in the face of a great achievement; but it is part of our task to see what time has done to Spencer's synthesis.
The first obstacle, of course, is the Unknowable. We may cordially recognize the probable limitations of human knowledge; we cannot quite fathom that great sea of existence of which we are merely a transient wave. But we must not dogmatize on the subject, since in strict logic the assertion that anything is unknowable already implies some knowledge of the thing. Indeed, as Spencer proceeds through his ten volumes, he shows "a prodigious knowledge of the unknowable."[4]
- ↑ I, 466.
- ↑ I, 250.
- ↑ The analysis, of course, is incomplete. "Space forbids" (the author has often smiled at this cloak for laziness, but must offer it here), a discussion of the Education, the Essays, and large sections of the Sociology. The lesson of the Education has been too well learned; and we require today some corrective of Spencer's victorious assertion of the claims of science as against letters and the arts. Of the essays, the best are those on style, laughter, and music. Hugh Elliott's Herbert Spencer is an admirable exposition.
- ↑ Bowne: Kant and Spencer, p. 253.
