Herbert Spencer

This volume attempts to give a short account of Herbert Spencer’s life, an appreciation of his characteristics, and a statement of some of the services he rendered to science. Prominence has been given to his Autobiography, to his Principles of Biology, and to his position as a cosmic evolutionist; but little has been said of his psychology and sociology, which require another volume, or of his ethics and politics, or of his agnosticism-the whetstone of so many critics. Our appreciation of Spencer’s services is therefore partial, but it may not for that reason fail in its chief aim, that of illustrating the working of one of the most scientific minds that ever lived, -whose excess of science was almost unscientific.-