CHARACTERISTICS:—PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL
The Autobiography—Physical Characteristics—Intellectual Characteristics—Limitations—Development of Spencer's Mind—Methods of Work—Genius?
Spencer was much given to summing up what he called the "traits" of the men he met, and he extended the process to himself in his Autobiography, which is an elaborate piece of self-portraiture.
The Autobiography.—Some one has called autobiography the least credible form of fiction, but that is not the impression which Spencer's gives. His self-analysis is candid and continuous; he is always revealing his feet of clay, and that with a self-complacency which is unintelligible to those who do not understand the impersonal scientific mood which had become habitual to Spencer. He almost achieved the impossible, of looking at himself from the outside.
Huxley wrote an autobiography in a score of pages, and he never wrote anything better; Spencer occupied over a thousand pages with his account of himself, and he never wrote anything worse. Dictated in outline in 1875, it was elaborated piecemeal, in small daily instalments, after the most serious of the many breakdowns in health had precluded more difficult work. Naturally enough, therefore, the Autobiography is often prolix and lacking in proportion, often slack in style and, it must be confessed, tedious. Little details in a picture may be essential to the effective impression, but Spencer often wearies us with trifling incidents whose narration has no excuse except as happening in a great life. Yet, if we lay the volumes aside, bored by their monumental egotism, we return to them with sympathy, and are won again by their unaffected frankness and candid sincerity.
With the Autobiography before us, but exercising the right of private judgment, we propose in this and the next chapter to sum up Spencer's characteristics—physical, intellectual, and emotional, and to refer to his methods of work and conduct of life.
Physical Characteristics.—Spencer at his best was an impressive figure, "tall, erect, a little gaunt, with a magnificent broad brow and high domed head." "His face," Prof. W. H. Hudson writes, "was a strikingly expressive one, with its strong frontal ridge, deep-set eyes, prominent nose, and firmly-cut mouth and jaw—the face of a man marked out for intellectual leadership."[1] It was not wrinkled with thought, as one might have expected, but was smooth as a child's or as a bishop's, the explanation being, as Spencer said, that he never worried over things, but allowed his brain to do its own thinking without pressure. He looked anything but an invalid, for his cheeks were ruddy even in later years. He had a fine voice and "a rather rare laugh of deep-chested musical qualities."
[1] Herbert Spencer: A Character Study, "Fortnightly Review," 1904.
He lamented that he had not inherited his father's finely developed chest organs, and that in consequence his cerebral circulation was under par. More positively, he seems to have inherited a readily fatigued nervous system, which limited his powers of protracted attention and made him not infrequently irritable and difficult to get on with. As we have seen he suffered periodically from over-taxing his brain, which induced terrible insomnia. Like Carlyle, he suffered from dyspepsia.
Intellectual Characteristics.—1. Among his intellectual characteristics, Spencer gave the foremost place to his "unusual capacity for the intuition of cause." The capacity was inherited and it was carefully nurtured. His restlessness to discover causes—"natural causes"—was illustrated when, as a boy of thirteen, he called in question the dictum of Dr Arnott respecting inertia, and it was characteristic of his whole intellectual life. He cultivated this inquisitiveness for causes till the mood became habitual, and resulted in what we may almost call an interpretative instinct. That this never led him astray, not even his most enthusiastic disciples would venture to maintain.
While the scientific method is always fundamentally the same, there is happily some legitimate elasticity in the order of procedure. Some minds start with a clue perceived by a flash of insight and then proceed to test and verify; others collect their data laboriously and never get a glimpse of their conclusion until the induction is complete. Some seem to have a selective instinct for getting hold of the most significant facts, or for making the crucial experiment; others have to plod on patiently from fact to fact and must make many "fools' experiments." Some find a nugget while their neighbours get their gold in dust particles after washing much ore.
Now Spencer had that passion for facts which is fundamental to all solid scientific work, but he had the greater gift of getting rapidly beneath facts to the question of their significance. He had not the love of details which is essential to the descriptive naturalist for instance, which sometimes becomes intellectual avarice for copper coinage, but he was instinctively an ætiologist, an interpreter.
In his account of the working of his mind, he says:—
"There was commonly shown a faculty of seizing cardinal truths rather than of accumulating detailed information. The implications of phenomena were then, as always, more interesting to me than the phenomena themselves. What did they prove? was the question instinctively put. The consciousness of causation, to which there was a natural proclivity, and which had been fostered by my father, continually prompted analyses, which of course led me below the surface and made fundamental principles objects of greater attention than the various concrete illustrations of them. So that while my acquaintance with things might have been called superficial, if measured by the number of facts known, it might have been called the reverse of superficial, if measured by the quality of the facts. And there was possibly a relation between these traits. A friend who possessed extensive botanical knowledge, once remarked to me that, had I known as much about the details of plant-structure as botanists do, I never should have reached those generalisations concerning plant-morphology which I had reached." (Autobiography I.)
2. Another inherited capacity was "the synthetic tendency," the power of generalising or of working out unifying formulæ. His first book Social Statics set out with a general principle; his first essay was entitled, "A theory of population, deduced from the general law of animal fertility"; his life-work was the Synthetic Philosophy. One of George Eliot's witticisms made game of Spencer's aptitude for generalisation. He had been explaining his disbelief in the critical powers of salmon, and his aim in making flies "the best average representation of an insect buzzing on the surface of the water." "Yes," she said, "you have such a passion for generalising, you even fish with a generalisation." And this exactly describes what he spent much of his life in doing.
Mr Francis Galton has graphically stated his impression, that Spencer's composite mental photographs, in forming a generalisation, or in using a general formula-term, were many times multiple of those of ordinary mortals. A composite mental photograph from a small number of intellectual negatives yields a blurred outline—a woolly idea, with ragged edges and loose ends—but a composite mental photograph from a very large number of impressions, yielded, in Spencer's case, a generalisation which was crisp and well-defined. Some one has said that Ruskin had the most analytic mind in modern Christendom: that Spencer had one of the most synthetic minds can hardly be questioned.
3. It was one of the open secrets of Spencer's power that his analytic tendency was almost equal to his synthetic tendency. "Both subjectively and objectively, the desire to build up was accompanied by an almost equal desire to delve down to the deepest accessible truth, which should serve as an unshakable foundation." "It appears that in the treatment of every topic, however seemingly remote from philosophy, I found occasion for falling back on some ultimate principle in the natural order."
The first volume of the Psychology is synthetic, the second volume is analytic, "taking to pieces our intellectual fabric and the products of its actions, until the ultimate components are reached"; and we find the same two methods pursued in his other books.
"While, on the one hand, they betray a great liking for drawing deductions and building them up into a coherent whole; on the other hand, they betray a great liking for examining the premises on which a set of deductions is raised, for the purpose of seeing what assumptions are involved in them, and what are the deeper truths into which such assumptions are resolvable. There is shown an evident dissatisfaction with proximate principles, and a restlessness until ultimate principles have been reached; at the same time there is shown a desire to see how the most complex phenomena are to be interpreted as workings of these ultimate principles. It is, I think, to the balance of these two tendencies that the character of the work done is mainly ascribable."
But while Spencer had beyond doubt analytic powers of a very high order, it is to be feared that there is some justice in the criticism that he sometimes confused abstraction with analysis, and reached an apparently simple result by abstracting away some essential components.
4. "One further cardinal trait, which is in a sense a result of the preceding traits, has to be named—the ability to discern inconspicuous analogies." It was in part this ability that gave Spencer his power of handling so many different orders of facts. "The habit of ignoring the variable outer components and relations, and looking for the invariable inner components and relations, facilitates the perception of likeness between things which externally are quite unlike—perhaps so utterly unlike that, by an unanalytical intelligence, they cannot be conceived to have any resemblance whatever." It is this kind of insight which enables the morphologist to unify a whole series of organic types by detecting the similarities of architecture underlying the exceedingly diverse external expression. It was this kind of insight which led Spencer to his analogy between a social organism and an individual organism, and to many others which have been found fruitful. But it is to be feared that some of his analogies, notably that between inanimate mechanisms and living creatures led him far astray.
5. Another power strongly developed was constructive imagination. The boy who was so fond of building castles in the air, who grudged the sleep which put an end to his fanciful adventures, grew up a man whose mind was his kingdom. All sorts of things and thoughts pulled the trigger of his imagination, with which he was often so preoccupied that he would pass those living in the same house with him and look them in the face without knowing that he had seen them.
Spencer found in the delight of constructive imagination part of the explanation of his versatility. The products of his mental action ranged "from a doctrine of State functions to a levelling-staff; from the genesis of religious ideas to a watch escapement; from the circulation in plants to an invalid bed; from the law of organic symmetry to planing machinery; from principles of ethics to a velocimeter; from a metaphysical doctrine to a binding-pin; from a classification of the sciences to an improved fishing-rod joint; from the general Law of Evolution to a better mode of dressing artificial flies." "But for every interest in either the theoretical or the practical, a requisite condition has been—the opportunity offered for something new. And here may be perceived the trait which unites the extremely unlike products of mental action exemplified above. They have one and all afforded scope for constructive imagination."
Clearness in exposition was another of Spencer's gifts, and he connected this with the fact that his grandfather and father had been teachers. But lucidity of exposition usually accompanies clear thinking, and increases if there is opportunity for practice. His fearlessness and his self-confidence, he also connected with the fact that in school the master must be the absolute authority, but it seems much more plausible to regard this characteristic independence of judgment as an outcrop of the Nonconformist mood of his ancestors.
Limitations.—Spencer was too scrupulous a self-analyst not to be aware of many of his own limitations, and he has exposed the defects of his qualities with the utmost frankness. Thus his disregard of authority, which helped him to independent positions in science and philosophy, seemed to become a habit of mind which prompted him to react from current beliefs and opinions without always doing them justice. His anti-classical bias led him "to underestimate the past as compared with the present". "Lack of reverence for what others have said and done has tended to make me neglect the evidence of early achievements."
One concrete instance may be selected,—his failure to appreciate Plato's dialogues, which the wise are at one in regarding as masterpieces of philosophical discussion, and as affording invaluable discipline for the most modern of thinkers. Spencer approached them with a strong bias, with a predisposition to depreciate, and what was the result? "Time after time I have attempted to read, now this dialogue and now that, and have put it down in a state of impatience with the indefiniteness of the thinking and the mistaking of words for things: being repelled also by the rambling form of the argument. Once when I was talking on the matter to a classical scholar, he said—'Yes, but as works of art they are well worth reading.' So, when I again took up the dialogues, I contemplated them as works of art, and put them aside in greater exasperation than before. To call that a 'dialogue' which is an interchange of speeches between the thinker and his dummy, who says just what it is convenient to have said, is absurd. There is more dramatic propriety in the conversations of our third-rate novelists; and such a production as that of Diderot, Rameau's nephew, has more strokes of dramatic truth than all the Platonic dialogues put together, if the rest are like those I have looked into. Still, quotations from time to time met with, lead me to think that there are in Plato detached thoughts from which I might benefit had I the patience to seek them out. The like is probably true of other ancient writings." (!)
Disregard of authority is a great gift, if it go hand in hand with a careful examination of the reasons which lead to a conclusion becoming authoritative, but Spencer does not seem to have felt this responsibility. He began every subject by cleaning the slate. Thus one of the most conspicuous, and in some ways least agreeable characteristics of his intellectual work was his indifference as to what previous investigators had said. This was in part an expression of his own strength and independence, but it also savoured of arrogance. The virtue of it was that he approached a subject with the vigour of a fresh mind, but its vice was repeatedly disclosed in his failure to realise all the difficulties and subtleties of a problem—a failure which sometimes involved nothing short of amateurishness. A skilful naturalist has said that in tackling an unsolved problem there are only two commendable methods,—one to read everything bearing on the question, the other to read nothing. It was the second method that Spencer habitually practised. He gathered facts, but took little stock in opinions or previous deliverances.
Thus in beginning to plan out his Social Statics he "paid little attention to what had been written either upon ethics or politics. The books I did read were those which promised to furnish illustrative material." He wrote his First Principles with a minimal knowledge of the philosophical classics, and his Psychology as if he had been living before the invention of printing. Some one thought certain parts of his Education savoured of Rousseau, but he had not heard of Emile when he wrote. He was greatly indebted to von Baer for a formula, but there is no evidence that he ever read any part of the great embryologist's works. The suggestion that he was indebted to Comte for some sociological ideas might have been dismissed at once on a priori grounds as absurd. And in point of fact when Spencer wrote his Social Statics he knew no more of Comte than that he was a French philosophical writer, and it was not till 1853 that he began to nibble at Comte's works, to which Lewes and George Eliot had repeatedly directed his attention. He adopted two of Comte's words—"altruism" and "sociology"—but beyond that his indebtedness was little. We may take his own word for it: "The only indebtedness I recognise is the indebtedness of antagonism. My pronounced opposition to his views led me to develop some of my own views." That they both tried to organise a system of so-called philosophy out of the sciences indicates a community of aim, but there the resemblance ceases.
Spencer's intellectual development seems to have been peculiarly detached and independent. He was of course influenced by his father and by two of his uncles during his formative period, and he was also doubtless influenced by George Henry Lewes and George Eliot, Huxley and Hooker in later years—as who could help being—but in the main he was a strong, self-sufficient, self-made Ishmaelite. Similarly as regards authors, he was influenced by Lamarck's transformist theory, by Laplace's nebular hypothesis, by Malthus's theory of population, by Milne-Edwards' idea of the physiological division of labour, by von Baer's formula, by Hamilton and Mansel, by Grove's correlation of the physical forces, by Darwin's Origin of Species, and so on, but his own thought was always far more to him than anything he ever read.
Just as independence may become a vice, so with criticism, and Spencer had certainly the defect of this quality. Like his grandfather and his father before him, he was perpetually criticising, and he developed a hypersensitiveness to mistakes and shortcomings. For while sound criticism is an intellectual saving grace, it defeats its own end when the critic is constantly looking for reasons for disagreement, rather than for supplementary construction. Comte was assuredly right in saying that one only destroys when one replaces. Morever, Spencer's dominant tendency greatly interfered with his power of admiration. He was so keenly alive to "the many mistakes in chiaroscuro which characterise various paintings of the old masters" that he found little pleasure in them. When looking at Greek sculpture he constantly discovered unnatural drapery. When he went to the opera with George Eliot he remarked "how much analysis of the effects produced deducts from enjoyment of the effects." He could not even look at a beautiful woman without his "phrenological diagnosis" discovering something which took the edge off his admiration. "It seems probable," he quaintly remarks, "that this abnormal tendency to criticise has been a chief factor in the continuance of my celibate life."
Development of Spencer's Mind.—Spencer has himself given us an account of his mental development.
As a boy his mind was always set upon discovering natural causes, and under his father's influence there grew up in him "a tacit belief that whatever occurred had its assignable cause of a comprehensible kind." Insensibly he relinquished the current creed of supernaturalism and its associated story of creation.
The doctrine of the universality of natural causation has for its inevitable corollary the doctrine that the Universe and all things in it have reached their present forms through successive stages physically necessitated. But no such corollary suggested itself definitely until Spencer was twenty when he read Lyell's Principles of Geology, and was led by Lyell's arguments against Lamarck to a partial acceptance of Lamarck's evolutionist point of view.
Two years afterwards, in The proper Sphere of Government, "there was shown an unhesitating belief that the phenomena of both individual life and social life conform to law"; and eight years later in Social Statics, the social organism was discussed in the same sort of way as the individual organism; a physiological view of social actions was taken, and the same mode of progress was shown to be common to all changing phenomena.
In 1852 the essay on the "Development Hypothesis" was an open avowal of evolutionism; and other essays on population and over-legislation "assumed that social arrangements and institutions are products of natural causes, and that they have a normal order of growth."
An acquaintance with von Baer's description of individual development gave definiteness to Spencer's conception of progress, and the idea of change from homogeneity to heterogeneity became his formula of evolution, applicable to style, to manners and fashions, to science itself, and to the growing mind of the child, as was shown in a succession of essays on these themes.
The next great step was in the Principles of Psychology which sought to trace out the genesis of mind in all its forms, sub-human and human, as produced by the organised and inherited effects of mental actions. Increase of faculty by exercise, hereditary entailment of gains, and consequent progressive adaptation, were prominent ideas in this treatise. "Progressive adaptation became increasing adjustment of inner subjective relations to outer objective relations—increasing correspondence between the two."
So far, then, Spencer had recognised throughout a vast field of phenomena the increase of heterogeneity, of speciality, of integration—as traits of progress of all kinds; and thus arose the question: Why is this increasing heterogeneity universal? "A transition from the inductive stage to the deductive stage was shown in the answer—the transformation results from the unceasing multiplication of effects. When, shortly after, there came the perception that the condition of homogeneity is an unstable condition, yet another step towards the completely deductive stage was made." "The theorem passed into the region of physical science."
"The advance towards a complete conception of evolution was itself a process of evolution. At first there was simply an unshaped belief in the development of living things; including, in a vague way, social development. The extension of von Baer's formula expressing the development of each organism, first to one and then to another group of phenomena, until all were taken in as parts of a whole, exemplified the process of integration. With advancing integration there went that advancing heterogeneity implied by inclusion of the several classes of inorganic phenomena and the several classes of super-organic phenomena in the same category with organic phenomena. And then the indefinite idea of progress passed into the definite idea of evolution, when there was recognised the essential nature of the change, as a physically determined transformation conforming to ultimate laws of force."
It is difficult to state with any certainty what led Spencer in 1857 to a coherent body of beliefs—to the first sketch of his system. In the main the unification was probably a natural maturation and integration of his thoughts, but it was perhaps helped by the immediate task of revising and publishing a collection of essays, and also by the fact that "the time was one at which certain all-embracing scientific truths of a simple order were being revealed." Notably the doctrine of the conservation and transformability of energy was beginning to possess scientific minds, and the doctrine of evolution was beginning to make its grip felt.
Furthermore, in trying to understand Spencer, we must recognise that he was the flower of a nonconformist dissenting stock, that his mind matured in contact with engines and other mechanisms, and that he was almost forced to exclude new influences after he settled down with his system at the age of forty.
Methods of Work.—While there was nothing remarkable in Spencer's methods of work, it may be of interest to indicate certain general features which the Autobiography discloses.
In the first place, after a few disastrous experiments, he abandoned any attempt at what is usually called working hard. Like many an artist who will only paint when he feels in the mood and in good form, Spencer would never write or dictate under pressure, or when he felt that his brain was not working smoothly. When he was writing the Principles of Psychology (1854-5), he began between nine and ten and continued till one; he then paused for a few minutes to take some slight refreshment, usually a little fruit, and resumed till three, altogether about five hours at a stretch. He then went for a walk, returned in time for dinner between five and six, and did considerable proof-correcting thereafter. But, as we have seen, the result of this strenuousness—which would be quite normal to many students—was his first serious breakdown, involving a loss of eighteen months. Thereafter, it was his custom to work for short spells at a time, to sandwich work and exercise, and to take a holiday whenever he began to feel tired.
His output of work was so large even for a long life that one naturally thinks of him as a hard worker. But the reverse would be nearer the truth. Partly as a self-justification of his "constitutional idleness," and partly as a precaution against his hereditary tendency to nervous breakdown, he was a strong advocate of the proposition that "Life is not for work, but work is for life." "The progress of mankind is, under one aspect, a means of liberating more and more life from mere toil and leaving more and more life available for relaxation—for pleasurable culture, for æsthetic gratification, for travels, for games." Industry is not a virtue in itself; over-work is blameworthy.
In the second place, Spencer made it a rule never to force his thinking. If a problem was not clear to him, he let it simmer. "On one occasion George Eliot expressed her surprise that the author of Social Statics had no lines on his forehead, to which he answered, 'I suppose it is because I am never puzzled.' This called forth the exclamation: 'O! that's the most arrogant thing I ever heard uttered.' To which I rejoined: 'Not at all, when you know what I mean.' And I then proceeded to explain that my mode of thinking did not involve that concentrated effort which is commonly accompanied by wrinkling of the brows" (Autobiography, i. p. 399).
Spencer did not set himself a problem and try to puzzle out an answer. "The conclusions at which I have from time to time arrived, have not been arrived at as solutions of questions raised; but have been arrived at unawares—each as the ultimate outcome of a body of thoughts which slowly grew from a germ."
He had "an instinctive interest in those facts which have general meanings"; he let these accumulate and simmer, thinking them over and over again at intervals. "When accumulation of instances had given body to a generalisation, reflexion would reduce the vague conception at first framed to a more definite conception; and perhaps difficulties or anomalies at first passed over for a while, but eventually forcing themselves on attention, might cause a needful qualification and a truer shaping of the thought. Eventually the growing generalisation, thus far inductive, might take deductive form: being all at once recognised as a necessary consequence of some physical principle—some established law. And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would grow up a coherent and organised theory" (Autobiography, i. 400, 401). In short, Spencer gave his thinking machine time to do its work, or in other words he let his thoughts grow. He distrusted strain and all forcing. Like a good golfer, he would not "press." "The determined effort causes perversion of thought."
A third feature in his work has been already alluded to—his practical indifference to the literature of the subject at which he was working. For this characteristic there were doubtless several reasons, though none of them justified it. He was not fond of hard reading, and conserved his energy for his own production; he had abundant thought-material of his own, and no lack of confidence in its value. Furthermore, he explains, "It has always been out of the question for me to go on reading a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely dissent from. Tacitly giving an author credit for consistency, I, without thinking much about the matter, take it for granted that if the fundamental principles are wrong, the rest cannot be right, and thereupon cease reading—being, I suspect, rather glad of an excuse for doing so" (i. p. 253). "All through my life," he says, "Locke's 'Essay' had been before me on my father's shelves, but I had never taken it down; or at any rate I have no recollection of having read a page of it." More than once he tackled Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but was baulked at the start by the doctrine that time and space are merely subjective forms. Nor did Mill's Logic interest him.
At the same time it is not to be supposed that Spencer wove his system out of himself as a spider its web. He had a wonderful aptitude for collecting data by a strange sort of skimming reading.
"Though by some I am characterised as an a priori thinker, it will be manifest to any one who does not set out with an a priori conception of me, that my beliefs, when not suggested a posteriori, are habitually verified a posteriori. My first book, Social Statics, shows this in common with my later books. I have sometimes been half-amused, half-irritated, by one who speaks of me as typically deductive, and whose own conclusions, nevertheless, are not supported by facts anything like so numerous as those brought in support of mine. But we meet with men who are such fanatical adherents of the inductive method, that immediately an induction, otherwise well established, is shown to admit of deductive establishment, they lose faith in it" (Autobiography, i. pp. 304-5).
No one who studies Spencer's works can fail to be impressed with the logical orderliness and lucidity of his method. Thus, in beginning The Principles of Biology, for instance, we are first asked to consider what truths the biologist takes for granted; e.g., the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter; then we are asked to notice the inductions in regard to the phenomena of life which biologists agree in accepting as well-established; and only then do we pass to Spencer's particular interpretation of the facts in the light of his evolutionist ideas. The same logical method is illustrated in his treatment of psychology, sociology and ethics.
Like most men who get through much work, Spencer was very methodical and orderly. In reference to his Sociology, he tells us how he classified and reclassified his materials in fasciculi, placing them in a semi-circle on the floor round his chair, inserting new "covers" where there seemed need for them, and gradually filling these. As the plan became clear, the materials for a chapter were raised to his large desk, and then began a grouping into sections, and a grouping within each section.
He did not begin to compose until he had thought out his subject to the best of his ability. He then wrote or dictated a little at a time, criticising every sentence with especial reference to clearness and force. Except for his first book, which he revised, copied out, and revised afresh, the original copy was always sent to press "sprinkled with erasures and interlineations." He was more interested in vigour and lucidity of style than in its beauty, and it was characteristic of him to try to correlate effectiveness of style with the doctrine of the conservation of energy. The main thesis in the essay on "The Philosophy of Style" may be briefly stated. The reader has only a limited amount of nervous energy, and it is important that this should not be dissipated before he comes to the ideas of which the style is the vehicle. "In proportion as there is less energy absorbed in interpreting the symbols, there is more left for representing the idea, and, consequently, greater vividness of the idea." "Every resistance met with in the progress from the antecedent idea to the consequent idea, entails a deduction from the force with which the consequent idea arises in consciousness."
It is common to speak of Spencer's works as "hard reading," but those who say so must have a strange scale of hardness. He may be difficult to agree with, but he is rarely difficult to understand; he deals with difficult themes, but he is singularly clear in his expression of his convictions. When he discusses less abstract questions, as in his Study of Sociology or Education, his style has almost every good quality except beauty. And when he occasionally "lets himself go" a little, as in the famous passage in the First Principles at the end of the discussion of the Unknowable, there is a ring of nobility in his sentences.
Sometimes he sums up with epigrammatic terseness, and we submit a few of his utterances which we have noted down as illustrating various qualities:—
"Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life."
"It is best to recognise the facts as they are, and not try to prop up rectitude by fictions."
"Beliefs, like creatures, must have fit environments before they can live and grow."
"Mind is not as deep as the brain only, but is, in a sense, as deep as the viscera."
"Melody is an idealised form of the natural cadences of emotion."
"Logic is a science of objective phenomena."
"In proportion as intellect is active, emotion is rendered inactive."
"Inherited constitution must ever be the chief factor in determining character."
"Each nature is a bundle of potentialities of which only some are allowed by the conditions to become actualities."
"Considering that the ordinary citizen has no excess of individuality to boast of, it seems strange that he should be so anxious to hide what little he has."
"Englishmen are averse to conclusions of wide generality."
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
"A nation which fosters its good-for-nothings will end by becoming a good-for-nothing nation."
"I don't mean to get on. I don't think getting on is worth the bother."
Genius.—It doubtless requires genius to define genius, and until that is done, the question of awarding or refusing this supreme title to our hero need not be very seriously discussed. All will agree that genius is more than unusually great talent; that it is neither "une patience suivie" nor "an infinite capacity for taking pains"; that it is not to be judged by its effectiveness; and that it may never receive the unwithering laurels of immortality. Spencer poured contempt on Carlyle's assertion that genius "means transcendent capacity of taking trouble first of all"; the truth being, he said, that genius may be rightly defined quite oppositely, as an ability to do with little trouble that which cannot be done by the ordinary man with any amount of trouble.
Another of Spencer's remarks about genius is worth citing. Speaking of Huxley's wonderful versatility as a thinker, he said that it lent "some colour to the dictum—quite untenable, however—that genius is a unit, and, where it exists, can manifest itself equally in all directions." As it seems to us, there is much truth in the dictum which Spencer dismissed as "quite untenable." The genius is a new variation of high potential and is as such a unity, capable of expressing itself in many diverse ways, and always with originality. The expression of genius may be intellectual, emotional, or practical, according to the mood which is constitutionally dominant and according to the opportunities afforded by education and circumstances; but there seems much to be said, both on general grounds and from a study of historical examples, for the view that genius means something distinctive in the whole mental pattern or personality, and is potentially at least many-sided.
Biologically regarded, a genius is a transilient variation on the up-grade of psychical evolution, of such magnitude that it stands apart as a new mental pattern, as a peculiar combination of moods at a high potential, as a secret amalgam. Whether it be intellectual, emotional, or practical, it sees or feels or does things in a new way. It makes what it touches new; it affords a new outlook. "God said: Let Newton be! and there was light"—that is genius.
In this sense we venture to think that Spencer was not far from the kingdom of genius. He saw all things in the light of the evolution-idea; he had a fresh vision of the unity of nature and the unity of science, and the light that was in him was so clear that it radiated into other minds. Had his emotional nature been stronger, had he been more than luminiferous, he might have set the world aflame.