SPENCER. 434 SPENCER. with whom he spent nearly a year. For some ten years he engaged in engineering pursuits. W'heia the railway mania finally suhsided, Spencer, now twenty-six, was left, like many other young men, without occupation. But the time spent at home while he was looking for something to do was not wasted. He had leisure for a good deal of miscellaneous reading. He studied Lyell's Principles of Geology, in which the doctrine of evolution as defended by Lamarck was attacked, but came away from the reading with a favorable impression of Lamarck's doc- trine as against creationism. While he was in the railway service, still a mere boy. he wrote some articles for The yon- conformist on "the pioper sphere of government," in which he outlined the principles of non-inter- ference which regulated all his thinking in later life. When no more work oflTered as an engineer, he went to London and soon obtained employ- ment on The Economist, becoming its sub-editor in 1848. This position, which he held till 1852, gave him time for his studies, and made him ac- quainted with that brilliant coterie which cen- tred about George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, and John Stuart Mill. During his leisure hours he wrote his first considerable work, Social Sta- tics (1851). It is of a decidedly a priori char- acter, and not written in the inductive spirit of his later thinking. It shows, however, his ten- dency to reconcile opposing influences and to dis- cover closeness of relations where others did not suspect them. Subsequently he became dissatis- fied with both its views and its methods, and wished to recall it from circulation. This being found impossible, in later years he revised it by omitting what he had outgrown. In the eight years after his leaving The Econo- mist, he pursued his studies with eagerness, and published a work on Psychology (1855), which he afterwards revised and expanded into a part of his Synthetic Philosophy. Over-application brought on a serious attack of nervous prostra- tion, which obliged him for the rest of his life to abridge his hours of study. He became a chronic sufferer from dyspepsia and insomnia, so that all his later work had to be done under these disad- vantages. Meanwhile he had conceived a system of philosophy which should embrace the general principles of all existing knowledge. In 1800 he published a prospectus or outline of it, indicating his intention to give twenty years to its develop- ment. The first instalments of the system did not meet with the reception he expected, and he feared he would have to abandon his undertak- ing. But the timely aid of American friends, at the head of whom was Mr. Youmans, editor of the Popular Science Monthly, enabled him to con- tinue his work. His health, however, was so precarious that at one time he feared he would not live to complete the system. With this view he suspended his labors on the main part of his work to write The Data of Ethics, which had been the object of the whole system, and in which it was intended to culminate. Fortunately, his life was prolonged sufficiently to enable him to complete the system, and to revise a part of it in order to bring it up to date. It consists of First Principles (1862) ; Principles of Biology (1864) ; Principles of Psychology (1871-72) ; Principles of Sociology ( 1876-80) : Principles of Ethics (1879). He also wrote three volumes of Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1858-63), and some fugitive articles including two essays on Weissniannism (1894, 1895). He died De- cember 8, 1903. It was his intention in the Synthetic Philoso- phy to develop a complete and articulated con- ception of all cosmic phenomena, including those of mental and social principles. His qualifica- tions for attempting so comprehensive a task were wide powers uf generalization, profound ac- quaintance with {he facts of the various sciences, and a veritable genius for detecting the relations and connections of phenomena that escape the specialist. No philosopher has employed such a wealth of illustration and facts to explain his meaning or to prove his thesis. It is the clear- ness of his thought, the force of his illustra- tions, and the dependence of his views upon the facts and methods of the inductive sciences that have given him his power over all thinkers, except the technical and traditional philosophers. His attempt to systematize all knowledge in terms of modern science must always receive high credit among intelligent men. The First Principles endeavors to define the fields of 'the unknowable and the knowable,' and the postulates with which the study of the know- able must be pursued. The whole weakness of Spencer's system is shown in his discussion of the unknowable. The Absolute, Space, Time, Matter, Force, and Motion were all taken as un- knowable. After telling us that all these are un- knowable, he asserts that the most certain tilings in our conviction are the 'Absolute' and all the other fundamental data for the knowable. Be- sides, after telling us that all explanation con- sists in reference to the known, he says that all phenomena are explained as manifestations of the unknowable. 'Then, in the discussion of the knowable. Space, Time, Matter, Force, etc., ap- pear as known. Both the strength and weakness of his system are due to tliis equivocal import of the term knowledge. If Spencer had omitted all reference to the dogma of the unknowable and confined himself to a discussion of the know- able, he would have avoided the controversy which has invited the distrust of his system. The postulates with which he conducted his speculations were, besides the existence of Space, Time, Matter. Motion, and Force, the assumption of the indestructibility of Matter, the continu- ity of Motion, and the persistence of Force, which he regarded as an a priori truth, though also determinable inductively. The whole system is an application of the idea of evolution to the rmiverse. and more particu- larlv to organic life and its forms, and to po- litical and social institutions. Spencer's con- ception of this process did not go beyond Dar- win's in its details, but it was apparently quite as original and certainly more comprehensive, besides involving philo.sophic conceptions of which Darwin was incapable. Spencer applied the materialistic formula to the explanation of all things, but protested that he was not a ma- terialist. Even if he had expressed his doctrine, as he said he could as well have done, in terms of consciousness, it would not have modified the accusation against his materialism, as the ex- pression of philosophy in terms of mental states does not insure one against all that materialism stood for. In order to adapt the conception to all forms of phenomena, he variously expressed
