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.