Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/97

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SPENCER
81

cannot dominate or possess choose the former attitude, and seek to destroy those who do possess and dominate. And these, in turn, seek to conquer more and more, and to ward off their enemies while they endeavor to increase their domination over things and men.

Spencer, a middle-class spirit without courage and without audacity, remains dangling in the limbo of antinomies, wavering between the necessity of government and the lamentation of the oppressed. He was the pedantic Hamlet of a half-intelligent and compromising bourgeoisie.