Ten years before "Social Statics" appeared I was concerned with others in publishing, in the "Oracle of Reason," a theory of Regular Gradation. Our motto, from Boitard, was an explicit statement of Evolution. Five out of seven of us were soon in prison, which shows that we did not succeed in making Evolution attractive. Intellectual photography was then in an infantine state. Our negatives lacked definition and our best impressions were indistinct. It was not until Darwin and Spencer arose that the art of developing the Evolutionary plates came to be understood.
Before the days of Spencer the world of scientific thought was mostly without form and void. The orthodox voyagers who set out to sea steered by a compass which always veered to a Jewish pole, and none who sailed with them knew where they were. Rival theologians constructed dogmatic charts, increasing the confusion and peril. Guided by the pole star of Evolution, Spencer sailed out alone on the ocean of Speculation and discovered a new empire of Law—founded without blood, or the suppression of liberty, or the waste of wealth—where any man may dwell without fear or shame.
The fascination of Mr. Spencer's pages to the pulpit-wearied inquirer was, that they took him straight to Nature. Mr. Spencer seemed to write with a magnifying pen which revealed objects unnoticed by other observers. His vision, like a telescope, descried sails at sea invisible to those on shore. His pages, if not poems, gleamed with the poetry of facts. His facts were the handmaids always at hand which explained his principle. His repetitions do not tire, but are fresh assurances to the reader that he is following a continuous argument. A pedestrian passing down a long street is glad to meet the recurrence of its name, that he may know he is still upon the same road. In Spencer's reasonings there are no byways left open, down which the sojourner may wander and lose himself. When cross-roads come in sight, fingerposts are set up telling him where they lead to, and directing him which to take. Mr. Spencer pursues a new thought, never loses sight of it, and takes care the reader does not. No statement goes before without the proof following closely after.
When the reception was given to me at South Place Institute, London, in April, 1903, on my eighty-sixth birthday, he had been confined to his house from the previous August, yet he took trouble to write some words of personal regard to myself beyond all my expectation. To the end of his days—save when the weather was inclement—I used to walk up the hill to his door to inquire as to his health, and when I could not do so, Mr. Troughton would write me word. Mr. Spencer's last letter to me was in answer to one I had sent him on his birthday. It was so characteristic as to deserve quoting:
"Thanks for your congratulations; but I should have liked better your condolences on my longevity."
He wanted no twilight in his life. Like the sun in America, his wish was to disappear at once below the horizon—having amply given his share of light in his day.
Like Huxley, Mr. Spencer would not have slept well in Westminster Abbey. He needed no consolation in death; and if he had, there was no one who knew enough to give it to him. His conscience was his consolation. His one choice was that his friend Mr. John Morley—than whom none were fitter—should speak at his death the last words over him. Mr. Morley being in Sicily, this could not be. The next in friendship and power of estimate—the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney—spoke in his stead, at the Hampstead Crematorium. Mr. Spencer had a radium mind which gave forth, of its own spontaneity, light and heat. None who have died could more appropriately repeat the proud lines of Sir Edward Dyer:—
"My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find
As far exceeds all earthly bliss
That God or Nature hath assign'd."