Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/733

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SPENCER, THE MAN 709

objective character. He thereby removed many false notions of social- ism which up to that time were current in popular, and even in scientific, literature. Karl Hochberg, the son of a Frankfort banker, bought ten thousand copies of this book and distributed them among prominent persons scholars, civic officials, great manufacturers, and others in order to acquaint them with a just account of socialistic arguments.

"The last publications of Schaffle were devoted to the conflict between the Agrarians and the Protectionists. His monographs, Ein Votum gegen den neuesten Zolltarif and Die agrarische Gefahr, belong among the ablest attempts to deal with the tariff question. It is diffi- cult to classify Schaffle's position in the science of political economy. He does not belong to either of the existing schools. He has always maintained an independent attitude. Even among those who differ sharply with his opinions it has always been admitted that his writings were in many ways instructive and stimulating."

It should be added that the prevailing fashion of abusing those sociologists who have made much of biological analogies, or even of the "organic concept," betrays a state of mind which resembles nothing so much as a child's fear of the dark. Schaffle contributed the most dig- nified, the most elaborate, and the most permanently useful interpreta- tion of social functions that we have in terms of physiological analogy. The abuse and ridicule heaped upon his work have always gauged more accurately the dulness of his critics' perceptions than any real fault in his rendering. There will always be room for difference of opinion about the expediency of using biological figures in explaining social phenomena. There has never been the slightest real justification for forcing into Schaffle's terms the fantastic and misleading meanings which the atrophied imagination of overzealous literalists has encoun- tered in them. It was not Schaffle, but his readers, who turned illus- trative forms of expression into perversions of reality. There have been indications for several years that his real services to social science are presently to receive proper recognition.

ALBION W. SMALL.

SPENCER, THE MAN. 1

OF Spencer the dictum that " a man's life is his work " was singu- larly true. He perforce lived apart; he never courted publicity. Without an effort to parade his personality, he waited twenty years for

1 Abstract of an address at the Spencer Memorial Meeting, University of Chicago, January 7, 1904.