Looking back on the "Economist" period, Spencer felt that his later career had been "mainly determined by the conceptions which were then initiated and the friendships which were formed."
Books and Essays.—Spencer's life of greater freedom began with a holiday in Switzerland (1853), which "fully equalled his anticipations in respect of its grandeur, but did not do so in respect of its beauty." The tour was greatly enjoyed, for Spencer was a lover of mountains, but some excesses in walking seem to have overtaxed his heart, and immediately after his return "there commenced cardiac disturbances which never afterwards entirely ceased; and which doubtless prepared the way for the more serious derangements of health subsequently established."
For a time he settled down to essay-writing; e.g., on "Method in Education," in which he sought to justify his own experience of his father's non-coercive liberating methods by affiliating these with the Method of Nature; on "Manners and Fashions," in which he protested against unthinking subservience to social conventions, some of which are mere survivals of more primitive times without present-day justification; on "The Genesis of Science," in which he showed how the sciences have grown out of common knowledge; and on "Railway Morals and Railway Policy," in which he made some salutary disclosures with characteristic fearlessness.
Spencer's second book, "The Principles of Psychology," began to be written in 1854 in a summer-house at Tréport, and it was in the same year that the author made his first acquaintance with Paris. Preoccupied with his task, he wandered from Jersey to Brighton, from London to Derby, often writing about five hours a day, and thinking with but little intermission. The result was that he finished the book in about a year and almost finished his own career. The nervous breakdown that followed cost him a year and a half for recuperation, and his pursuit of truth was ever afterwards involved with a pursuit of health.
In search of health Spencer reverted to the best of his ability to a simple life, but he found it difficult not to think. Thought rode behind him when he tried horseback exercise, and novels brought only sleeplessness. He tried yachting and he tried fishing, shower-baths and sea-bathing, playing with children and sleeping in a haunted room, but the cure was slow; music was almost the only thing he could enjoy with impunity. It was when fishing one morning in Loch Doon that he vented his first oath, at the age of thirty-six, because his line was tangled, and became, he tells us, more fully aware of the irritability produced by his nervous disorder!
As entire idleness seemed futile, and as two and a half years had elapsed since he had made any money, Spencer returned to London (1857)—to a home with children—and began in a leisurely way to write more essays. He composed the article on "Progress: its Law and Cause" at the pathetically slow rate of about half a page per day, and the effort proved beneficial. A significant essay entitled, "Transcendental Physiology," dates from the same year, and during an angling holiday in Scotland he wrote another on the "Origin and Function of Music." Starting from the fact that feeling tends to discharge itself in muscular contractions, including those of the vocal organs, he sought to show that music is a development of the natural language of the emotions.
Crystallisation of his Thought.—Spencer settled down in London in a home "with a lively circle," and pursued his calling as a thinker with quiet resolution. He had Sunday afternoon walks and talks with Huxley, and he occasionally dined out to meet interesting people such as Buckle and Grote; but the tenor of his life was uninterrupted by much incident. In this year he published a volume of essays new and old, Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative; and this was probably in part responsible for a great unification in Spencer's thought. It was in the beginning of 1858 that he made the first sketch of his System, and on the 9th of January he wrote to his father as follows: "Within the last ten days my ideas on various matters have suddenly crystallised into a complete whole. Many things which were before lying separate have fallen into their places as harmonious parts of a system that admits of logical development from the simplest general principles."
In this annus mirabilis (1858) when Darwin and Wallace read their papers at the Linnæan Society expounding the idea of Natural Selection, Spencer was also thinking keenly along evolutionary lines. He ventured on a defence of the Nebular Hypothesis and a criticism of Owen's Vertebral Theory of the Skull; and he was working at the question of the form and symmetry of animals, which he interpreted as "determined by the relations of the parts to incident forces." Vigorous as he was in his intelligence, he was still unable to work for more than about three hours a day, and his pecuniary prospects were dismal. In view of his determination to go on working out his System, it was a fortunate chance that led him in an emergency to discover that he could greatly increase his productivity by dictating instead of writing.
Spencer made various efforts (1859-60) to secure some Government appointment which would afford him a steady income and yet leave him free for his life-work, but as nothing came of these, he went on quietly with his essay-writing, with many pleasant holidays interspersed, and produced his "Illogical Geology," "The Social Organism," "Prison Ethics," "The Physiology of Laughter," and so on.
Settling to his life-work.—Baffled in other plans, he at length organised a scheme of publishing his projected series of volumes by subscription. His influential friends headed the list and four hundred names were soon secured in Britain; the disinterested energy of an American admirer, Prof. E. S. Youmans, raised the total to six hundred. And thus Spencer, at the age of forty, handicapped by lack of means and health, calmly sat down to a task which was calculated to occupy him for twenty years.... "To think that an amount of mental exertion great enough to tax the energies of one in full health and vigour, and at his ease in respect of means, should be undertaken by one who, having only precarious resources, had become so far a nervous invalid that he could not with any certainty count upon his powers from one twenty-four hours to another! However, as the result proved, the apparently unreasonable hope was entertained, if not wisely, still fortunately. For though the whole of the project has not been executed, yet the larger part of it has." In one form of faith Spencer was in no wise lacking.