THINKING OUT THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY
Thinking by Stratagem—The System Grows—Difficulties—Italy—Habits of Work—Sociology—Ill-health—Citizenship—Visit to America—Closing Years
Having theoretically secured the requisite number of subscribers to the projected series of volumes, Spencer tried to settle down to "something like unity of occupation." In the Spring of 1860 he began the First Principles—only to break down before he had finished the first chapter; and the same depressing experience was continually repeated. Fortunately for Spencer's peace of mind, his uncle William left him some money; one may well say fortunately, since the number of defaulters in the subscription list was so large that in the absence of other resources even the first volume could not have been published.
Thinking by Stratagem.—Spencer's devices for keeping off the cerebral congestion which work induced were many and various—some almost laughable, if the whole business had not been so tragic. He would ramble into the country, find a sheltered nook or sunny bank, do a little work, and move on like a "Scholar Gipsy"; he would take his amanuensis on the Regent's Park water, row vigorously for five minutes, dictate for fifteen, and so on da capo; he frequented an open racquet-court at Pentonville, and sandwiched games and First Principles; even in the Highlands he would dictate while he rowed. It was altogether like thinking by stratagem, and the tension of working against time became so irksome, that he issued a notice to the subscribers that successive numbers would come out when they were ready. Nevertheless, he completed the First Principles in June 1862.
The System Grows.—Having safely set forth his doctrine, Spencer turned with zest to relaxation, acting as cicerone to his friends at the International Exhibition, climbing in Wales, fishing in Scotland, revisiting Paris, and so forth. The years passed in alternate work and play, and the next great event was the publication of the first volume of the Principles of Biology in 1864. In spite of inadequate preparation Spencer produced by the strength of his intelligence a biological classic. At the time, of course, little notice was taken of it; thus in "The Athenæum" of 5th November 1864, a paragraph concerning the book commenced thus: "This is but one of two volumes, and the two but a part of a larger work: we cannot therefore but announce it." "In 1864," Spencer says, "not one educated person in ten or more knew the meaning of the word Biology; and among those who knew it, whether critics or general readers, few cared to know anything about the subject" (Autobiography, ii. p. 105).
It was in the same year (1864) that Spencer formulated his views on the classification of the sciences and his reasons for dissenting from the philosophy of Comte.
Of considerable interest was the formation of a decemvirate of Spencer's friends, which was first called "The Blastodermic" and afterwards the "X" club. It consisted of Huxley, Tyndall, Hooker, Lubbock, Frankland, Busk, Hirst, Spottiswoode, and Spencer, with one vacancy which was never filled up. The members dined together occasionally and talked at large. "Among its members were three who became Presidents of the Royal Society, and five who became Presidents of the British Association. Of the others one was for a time President of the College of Surgeons; another President of the Chemical Society; and a third of the Mathematical Society...." "Of the nine I was the only one who was fellow of no society, and had presided over nothing." The club lasted for at least twenty-three years (1887), and had considerable influence both on its members and externally.
In 1865 Spencer took considerable interest in a new weekly journal, called "The Reader," in which many prominent workers were implicated, but the enterprise ended in disappointment, unless, indeed, it was a step towards the establishment of Nature. In this and the following year he busied himself with an investigation regarding circulation in plants,—the only concrete piece of biological work he ever indulged in. But the great event of 1866 was the completion of The Principles of Biology.
Difficulties.—In the beginning of 1866 Spencer found that many of the subscribers to his serial publications had withdrawn, and that not a few were much in arrears, and he sorrowfully decided that he must abandon his undertaking. It was at this juncture that he discovered what stuff his friends were made of. Mr John Stuart Mill wrote proposing to help to indemnify Spencer for losses incurred, and offering to guarantee the publisher against any loss on the next treatise. He called this "a simple proposal of co-operation for an important public purpose, for which you give your labour and have given your health." As Spencer felt himself obliged to decline this generous proposal, the next move among his friends was to arrange to take a large number of copies (250) for distribution. To this, with mingled feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, Spencer agreed. Meanwhile, however, his American admirers, organised by Professor Youmans, invested in Spencer's name a sum of 7000 dollars as a fund to ensure the continued publication of his works. This, in combination with an improvement in Spencer's financial position, consequent on his father's death (1866), made publication once more secure without the aid of the subsidising scheme proposed by his English friends.
In September 1866 Herbert Spencer settled himself in London, en pension at 37 Queen's Gardens, Lancaster Gate, which remained his home for over a score of years. Henceforth he was less of a nomad, and he secured himself against all interruptions by taking a secret study a few doors off.
There are two records for the beginning of 1867 which are interesting in their contrast. The first is that Spencer declined without hesitation certain overtures by his friends that he should stand for the professorship of Moral Philosophy at University College, London, and for a similar post in Edinburgh; the second is that he invented a most elaborate invalid-bed, which, like most of his inventions, fell flat.
The invalid-bed had been suggested by his mother's prolonged feebleness, but it was not long to be used. Spencer was left in 1867 with no nearer relatives than cousins. In reference to his mother, we quote with all reverence one of the few strong personal touches in the Autobiography.
"Thus ended a life of monotonous routine, very little relieved by positive pleasures. I look back upon it regretfully: thinking how small were the sacrifices which I made for her in comparison with the great sacrifices which, as a mother, she made for me in my early days. In human life, as we at present know it, one of the saddest traits is the dull sense of filial obligations which exists at the time when it is possible to discharge them with something like fulness, in contrast with the keen sense of them which arises when such discharge is no longer possible."
In the spring of 1867 Spencer finished publishing the second volume of the Biology, and immediately set to work to recast First Principles. And as if that was not enough, he began in the same year, with the help of his secretary, Mr David Duncan, his collection of sociological data, which was intended to afford the foundation for a treatise on the Principles of Sociology. In spite of occasional holidays at Yarrow, at Glenelg, and in other delightful places, the usual nemesis of industry was not avoided. Spencer's nerve-centres, which could never endure prolonged attention, showed the usual symptoms of over-fatigue; and though he tried morphia and skating, hydropathy and rackets, he had to give up work early in 1868. He betook himself to Italy for rest, attracted partly by the fact that Vesuvius was in eruption! About this time he was elected a member of the Athenæum Club, the sedative amenities of which proved a useful prophylactic in after years.
Italy.—Of Spencer's Tour in Italy the Autobiography gives us some interesting reminiscences. He arrived in Naples in a state of extreme exhaustion, wearied with the voyage, wearied with a menu in which tunny was the pièce de résistance, and finding comfort only in the shelter of his Inverness cape. And yet, the day after his arrival, the author of Social Statics might have been seen giving swift chase to an audacious thief who had taken advantage of the philosopher's preoccupation to abstract his opera-glass. "Most likely had the young fellow had a knife about him I should have suffered, perhaps fatally, for my imprudence." A few days later, the same characteristic rashness impelled him to ascend the burning mountain without a guide and at great risk. "How to account for the judicial blindness I displayed, I do not know; unless by regarding it as an extreme instance of the tendency which I perceive in myself to be enslaved by a plan once formed—a tendency to become for a time possessed by one thought to the exclusion of others."
Nothing that Spencer saw in Italy impressed him so much as "the dead town" of Pompeii. The man who "took but little interest in what are called histories" was stirred by this concrete historical fossil. "It aroused sentiments such as no written record had ever done." He enjoyed Rome, but rather for its harmonious colouring than for its historical associations, of which he had no vivid perception. He was more irritated than pleased by the old masters. He got most pleasure from the scenery, but Italy is "a land of beautiful distances and ugly foregrounds." Companionless and impatient, his chief thought was how to get home most comfortably, and so he returned no better than he went.
Habits of Work.—About this time the tide had turned as regarded the sale of his works, and he wrote gratefully "the remainder of my life-voyage was through smooth waters." As the Autobiography shows, it was a quiet and uneventful voyage. Periods of work alternated with holidays, many parts of the country were visited, and angling became more and more his best recreation. "Nothing else served so well to rest my brain and fit it for resumption of work." Another resource was billiards, which he greatly enjoyed. He never could remember whist or similar games.
On fine mornings he used to spend two or three hours on the Serpentine, alternating rowing and dictating. After his morning's work and after lunch he used to walk through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Green Park, without more than a quarter of a mile upon pavement, to the Athenæum Club, where he skimmed through periodicals and books, and played his game. Thereafter he sauntered back to dinner at seven, "which was followed by such miscellaneous ways of passing the time without excitement as were available. Thus passed my ordinary days." By this time he had given up novel-reading, only treating himself to one about once a year, and then in a dozen or more instalments. He did not care to multiply social relations, he "avoided acquaintanceships and cultivated only friendships." "There is in me very little of the besoin de parler; and hence I do not care to talk with those in whom I feel no interest." And thus, though far from being a recluse, he lived his life of thought quietly.
In 1871 Spencer was nominated for the office of Lord Rector at the University of St Andrews, but he declined the honour for the sake of his work. He also declined the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the same University, and subsequently, similar honours, chiefly on the ground "that the advance of thought will be most furthered, when the only honours to be acquired by authors are those spontaneously yielded to them by a public which is left to estimate their merits as well as it can."
The first (synthetic) volume of the new edition of the Psychology begun in 1867 was finished in 1870, the second (analytic) volume begun in 1870 was completed in the end of 1872. Having become much interested in the well-known "International Scientific Series," Spencer contributed to it in 1873 the volume known as The Study of Sociology, which has done much in Britain and America to secure the position of Sociology as a workable science. It was unusually successful for a book of its kind, and brought Spencer about £1500.
Sociology.—From 1867 onwards Spencer had been collecting Sociological Data to serve as a basis for generalised interpretation. With the help of Mr David Duncan, Mr James Collier, and Dr Scheppig, this big piece of work made steady progress, and its publication began to be discussed in 1871. It was hoped that the plan of "exhibiting sociological phenomena in such wise that comparisons of them in their co-existences and sequences, as occurring among various peoples in different stages, were made easy, would immensely facilitate the discovery of sociological truths." The first part of this Descriptive Sociology was published in 1873, but the demand for it was very slight; not quite 200 copies were asked for in eight months. "I had," Spencer says, "greatly over-estimated the amount of desire which existed in the public mind for social facts of an instructive kind. They greatly preferred those of an uninstructive kind." In this and similar connections, the reader of the Autobiography cannot but be impressed by two facts,—on the one hand, the chivalrous eagerness on the part of American friends to be allowed to lessen Spencer's pecuniary burden, and, on the other hand, the almost ultra-sensitive resoluteness which Spencer exhibited in declining these offers.
In 1874, with the materials and memoranda of a quarter of a century around him, the thinker, who was blamed for not being inductive, set himself to write the Principles of Sociology, "feeling much as might a general of division who had become commander-in-chief; or rather, as one who had to undertake this highest function in addition to the lower functions of all his subordinates of the first, second, and third grades. Only by deliberate method persistently followed was it possible to avoid confusion."
The period of work on the Sociology was broken by some delightful holidays in the Highlands and elsewhere, by the British Association meeting at Belfast (1874) when Tyndall gave his famous Presidential Address, and by the usual ill-health. The first volume was completed in 1877. Apart from the nemesis of nerves, Spencer's life at this time seems to have been a happy one; he was fairly free from pecuniary cares; he was no longer tied to a serial issue of his publications; he could afford pleasant holidays, and he had a small circle of loyal friends. The philosopher began a series of annual picnics, which he seems to have engineered with great skill; in various ways he acted up to what he says was his habitual maxim, "Be a boy as long as you can." In 1877 he had the excitement of a shipwreck near Loch Carron, and the encouragement of having his Descriptive Sociology translated into Russian.
Ill-Health.—In spite of all his care, the year 1878 opened with a serious illness, and this prompted him to begin dictating The Data of Ethics lest an aggravation of his ill-health should hinder him from raising this coping-stone of his system. Just before Christmas of this year, he went with Prof. Youmans to the Riviera, and for a couple of months was more than usually successful in combining work and play. He finished The Data of Ethics in June 1879, and Ceremonial Institutions later in the year. As a reward of industry, and as a safeguard against too much of it, a holiday up the Nile in pleasant company was then arranged, and Spencer entered upon it in great spirits. But an ill-considered meal at Alexandria brought on dyspepsia and morbid fancies, and he was forced to return at the first cataract. He had seen many of the sights and was inevitably impressed, but he seems to have been glad to get out of the "melancholy country"—"the land of decay and death—dead men, dead races, dead creeds," as it appeared to his jaundiced eyes.
On his return journey he spent three days in Venice, but though he derived much pleasure from the general effects, he was repelled by the obtrusiveness and superficiality of the decorations. He regarded St Mark's as "a fine sample of barbaric architecture"; "it has the trait distinctive of semi-civilised art—excess of decoration"; "it is archæologically, but not æsthetically precious."
The entry in his journal for Feb. 12th, 1880 reads: "Home at 7-10; heartily glad—more pleasure than in anything that occurred during my tour."
Although he did not greatly enjoy his tour in Egypt, and brought back his packet of work unopened, the break seems to have been "decidedly beneficial." "It has apparently worked some kind of constitutional change; for, marvellous to relate, I am now able to drink beer with impunity and, I think, with benefit—a thing I have not been able to do for these fifteen years or more." He thought that it had also perhaps furthered his work to have had contact with people in a lower stage of civilisation.
In 1881 Spencer published the eighth part of his Descriptive Sociology and put a full stop to the undertaking which left him with a deficit of between three and four thousand pounds, and which had half-killed two secretaries.
Spencer's next task was the completion of Political Institutions, another instalment of the Sociology, which he had begun in 1879, and he was at this time also occupied in considering and answering the more formidable of the criticisms which his system had aroused, and in revising new editions of the First Principles and The Study of Sociology. It is interesting to note that the last work was carefully revised sentence by sentence five times.
Citizenship.—In 1881 Spencer felt in a new way the universal call "Il faut être citoyen"; he was drawn into practical action, and although this led to the greatest disaster of his life, the cause was worthy of the sacrifice. It was the cause of peace. While writing Political Institutions he had become more firmly convinced than ever that "the possibility of a higher civilization depends wholly on the cessation of militancy and the growth of industrialism." Conversations with Mr Frederic Harrison and others led to meetings of those who were sympathetic with what might be called a non-aggression policy, and Spencer was so keenly interested that in spite of forebodings he undertook some organising work, and even went the length of moving a resolution and making a speech at a public meeting. There was no direct political result of the "Anti-Aggression League," but there was most mischievous result to Spencer. "There was produced a mischief which, in a gradually increasing degree, undermined life and arrested work." He had now begun to descend the inclined plane which brought him down in the course of subsequent years to "the condition of a confirmed invalid, leading little more than a vegetative life." What Spencer did in connection with the Anti-Aggression movement was probably only the last straw, but he could not look back on his intrinsically right action without regret. "Right though I thought it, my course brought severe penalties and no compensations whatever. I am not thinking only of the weeks, months, years, of wretched nights and vacant days; though these made existence a long-drawn weariness. I refer chiefly to the gradual arrest and final cessation of my work; and the consciousness that there was slipping by that closing part of life during which it should have been completed." He was too honest to profess a pleasure he did not feel in a mens sibi conscia recti. "It is best," he said, "to recognise the facts as they are, and not try to prop up rectitude by fictions."
Visit to America.—In 1882 in the hope of recovering tone, not, as some of the papers said, of recouping his finances, Spencer went on a visit to America, along with Mr Lott his friend of forty years. He was, of course, pressed to lecture, and was offered terms up to 250 dollars per night, but he would have none of it. Lecturing was not his metier, and his health was broken. "As matters stand," he wrote, "the giving a lecture or reading a paper, would be nothing more than making myself a show; and I absolutely decline to make myself a show." The only public appearance he made was at a dinner in his honour at New York, where, with his fatigued brain, he spoke straight to the Americans on the sin of over-devotion to work. With his friend Lott as a buffer, he succeeded in avoiding all interviewers until he had got on board the Germanic on his return voyage, when he was taken unawares at the last moment.
Spencer saw some of the finest sights in America and Canada; he met congenial spirits, and everything possible was done to make his visit a tonic; but he came back in a worse state than he went, "having made another step downwards towards invalid life."
Closing Years.—From 1882 till 1889, when the Autobiography ends, Spencer's life was one of invalidism with occasional gleams of health. There was nothing organically wrong with him, but he had no reserve of nervous energy, and he was not able to work for more than brief intervals at a time. Yet he produced during these years The Man Versus the State, a volume on Ecclesiastical Institutions, and The Factors of Organic Evolution. He also dictated the Autobiography at the average rate of about fifteen lines per day!
As years went on Spencer became more and more of a recluse, more and more a man of nerves, the grasshopper became a burden, and as he watched himself with scientific minuteness, hypochondria naturally grew upon him. He continued, however, to use for work the minute fractions of a day when he felt relatively vigorous, and thus he at length actually finished his Synthetic Philosophy in 1896.
He gives an account of his daily routine when he had attained the age of seventy-three. In the mornings he did a little work, dictating for ten minutes at a time, and repeating the process from two to five times. During the rest of the day he killed time, walking a few hundred yards, driving for an hour or so in a carriage with india-rubber tyres, or "sitting very much in the open air, hearing and observing the birds, watching the drifting clouds, listening to the sighings of the wind through the trees." He could not read or bear being read to, he could not play games or listen to music, he used ear-stoppers to shut out conversation whenever he got tired of it, and without respect of persons, and he took opium to secure a few hours sleep at nights. He might have been more comfortable, physically, if he had abandoned all attempt at work, but the architectonic instinct tyrannised over him. He really lived for the sake of the little oases of work-time which broke the monotony of his daily journey.
It should be remembered, that invalid as he was, Spencer aggravated matters by his scientific hypochondria, and perhaps also by his soporifics. His disturbances of health involved little positive suffering, and, till he was considerably over sixty, he had few deprivations. Even in old age he had no invalid appearance. "Neither in the lines of the face nor in its colour, is there any such sign of constitutional derangement as would be expected. Contrariwise, I am usually supposed to be about ten years younger than I am" (1893).
"Spencer's closing years," Prof. Hudson writes, "were clouded with much sadness and disappointment." His days were vacant and his nights a weariness; he had outlived most of his friends and was lonely; and "the completion of his Synthetic Philosophy in 1896 did not bring him the keen satisfaction he fairly might have expected." He saw his political advice disregarded, and on all sides an exuberant growth of the socialistic organisations which he had spent himself in criticising. "He saw, too, with profound sorrow, unmistakable signs everywhere of reaction in religion, politics, society. The recrudescence of militarism, the development of a sordidly materialistic spirit throughout the modern nations and their abandonment of the principles of sanity and political righteousness—all these things cast a very black shadow over his declining path. I do not wonder that, as he looked back over his magnificent life-work, his mind should have been darkened by the doubt as to whether some of the truths, to which he attached the greatest value, might not after all have been set forth in vain" ("Fortnightly Review," 1904, p. 17).
Spencer's life closed in his eighty-third year, on December 8th, 1903.