England recognized the worth of Thoreau and Whitman long before America did; and so, perhaps, it was meet that we should do as much for Spencer, Ruskin and Carlyle.
One of the most valuable of the many great thoughts evolved by Spencer was on the "Art of Mentation," or brain-building. You can not afford to fix your mind on devils or hell, or on any other form of fear, hate and revenge. Of course, hell is for others, and the devils we believe in are not for ourselves. But the thoughts of these things are registered in the brain, and the hell we create for others, we ourselves eventually fall into; and the devils we conjure forth, return and become our inseparable companions. That is to say, all thought and all work—all effort—are for the doer primarily, and as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. This sounds like the language of metaphysics, which Kant said was the science of disordered moonshine. But Herbert Spencer's work was all a matter of analytical demonstration. And while the word "materialist" was everywhere applied to him, and he did not resent it, yet he was one of the most spiritual of men. A meta-physician is one who proves ten times as much as he believes; a scientist is one who believes ten times as much as he can prove. Science speaks with lowered voice. Before Spencer's time, German scientists had discovered that the cell was the anatomical unit of life, but it was for Spencer to show that it was also the psychologic or spiritual unit. New thoughts mean new brain-cells, and every new experience or emotion is building and strengthening a certain area of brain-tissue. We grow only through exercise, and all expression is exercise. The faculties we use grow strong, and those not used, atrophy and wither away. This is no less true, said Spencer, in the material brain than in the material muscle. A new thought causes a new structural enregistration. If it is the repetition of thought, the cells holding that thought are exercised and trained, and finally they act automatically, and repeated thought becomes habit, and exercised habit becomes character—and character is the man. It thus is plain that no man can afford to entertain the thought of fear, hate and revenge—and their concomitants, devils and hell—because he is enregistering these things physically in his being. These physical cells, as science has shown, are transmitted to offspring; and thus through continued mind-activity and consequent brain-cell building, a race with fixed characteristics is evolved. Pleasant memories and good thoughts must be exercised, and these in time will replace evil memories, so that the cells containing negative characteristics will atrophy and die. And when Herbert Spencer says that the process of doing away with evil is not through punishment, threat or injunction, but simply through a change of activities—thus allowing the bad to die through disuse—he states a truth that is even now coloring our whole fabric of pedagogics and penology. I couple these two words advisedly, for fifty years ago, pedagogics was a form of penology—the boarding-school with its mentors, scheme of fines, repressions and disgrace! And now we have lifted penology into the realm of pedagogics. I doubt me much whether the present penitentiary is a more unhappy place than a boys' English boarding-school was in the time of Squeers.
All of our progress has come from replacing bad activities with the good. Bad people we now believe are good folks who have misdirected their energies; and we all believe a deal more in the goodness of the bad than the badness of the good, with the result that "total depravity" and "endless punishment" have been shamed out of every pulpit where sane men preach. No devils danced on the footboard of Herbert Spencer's bed, because there were no devil-cells in his brain.
Another great discovery of Herbert Spencer's was that the emotions control the secretions. And the quality of the secretions determines the chemical changes which constitute all cellular growth. Thus, cheerful, happy emotions are similar to sunshine—they stand for health and harmony, and as such, are constructive. Good-will is sanitary; kindness is hygienic; friendship works for health. These happy emotions secrete a quality in the blood called anabolism, which is essentially vitalizing and life-producing.
On the other hand, fear, hate, and all forms of unkindness evolve a toxin, katabolism, which tends to clog circulation, disturb digestion, congest the secretions and stupefy the senses; and it tends to the dissolution and destruction of life. All that saddens, embitters and disappoints produces this chemical change that makes for death. "A poison," said Spencer, "is only a concentrated form of hate."
Spencer's discoveries in electricity have been most valuable, and it was by building on his suggestions and seeing with his prophetic eye that the Crookes Tube, the Roentgen Ray, and the discovery of radium have become possible.
The distinguishing feature of radium is its radioactivity, brought about through its affinity for electricity. It absorbs electricity from the atmosphere and gives it off spontaneously in the form of light and heat without appreciable loss of form or substance. Every good thing in life is dual, and through this natural and spontaneous marriage of radium and electricity, we get very close to the secret of life. As the sun is the giver of life and death, so by the use of the salts of radium have scientists vitalized certain forms of cell-life into growth and activity, and by the same token, and the use of the radium-ray, do they destroy the germs of disease.
By his prophetic vision, Spencer saw years ago that we would yet be able to eliminate and refine the substances of earth until we found the element that would combine spontaneously with electricity, and radiate life and heat. Among the very last letters dictated by Spencer, only a few days before his death, was one to Madame Curie congratulating her on her discovery of radium, and urging her not to relax in her further efforts to seek out the secret of life. "My only regret is," wrote the great man, "that I will not be here to rejoice with you in the fulness of your success." Thus to the last did he preserve the eager, curious and receptive heart of youth, and prove to the scientific world his theory that brain-cells, properly exercised, are the last organs of the body to lose their functions.