[Speech of William M. Evarts at a dinner given to Herbert Spencer, New
York City, November 9, 1882, the day before his return to England. Mr.
Evarts presided, and delivered this speech, in introducing Mr. Spencer
to the company.]
GENTLEMEN:--We are here to-night, to show the feeling of
Americans toward our distinguished guest. As no room and no city can
hold all his friends and admirers, it was necessary that a company
should be made up by some method out of the mass, and what so good a
method as that of natural selection [laughter] and the inclusion, within
these walls, of the ladies? It is a little hard upon the rational
instincts and experience of man that we should take up the abstruse
subjects of philosophy and of evolution, of all the great topics that
make up Mr. Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his
time, at this end of the dinner.
The most ancient nations, even in their primitive condition, saw the
folly of this, and when one wished either to be inspired with the
thoughts of others or to be himself a diviner of the thoughts of others,
fasting was necessary, and a people from whom I think a great many
things might be learned for the good of the people of the present time
have a maxim that will commend itself to your common-sense. They say the
continually stuffed body cannot see secret things. [Laughter.] Now, from
my personal knowledge of the men I see at these tables, they are owners
of continually stuffed bodies. [Laughter.] I have addressed them at
public dinners, on all topics and for all purposes, and whatever
sympathy they may have shown with the divers occasions which brought
them together, they come up to this notion of continually stuffed
bodies. In primitive times they had a custom which we only under the
system of differentiation practise now at this dinner. When men wished
to possess themselves of the learning, the wisdom, the philosophy, the
courage, the great traits of any person, they immediately proceeded to
eat him up as soon as he was dead. [Laughter.] Having only this
diversity in that early time, that he should be either roasted or boiled
according as he was fat or thin. [Laughter.] Now, out of that narrow
compass, see how by the process of differentiation and of multiplication
of effects we have come to a dinner of a dozen courses and wines of as
many varieties; and that simple process of appropriating the virtue and
the wisdom of the great man that was brought before the feast is now
diversified into an analysis of all the men here under the cunning
management of many speakers. No doubt, preserving as we do the identity
of all these institutions, it is often considered a great art, or at
least a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot water those
against whom we have a grudge. [Laughter.]
Now, Mr. Spencer, we are glad to meet you here. [Applause.] We are glad
to see you and we are glad to have you see us. [Laughter.] We are glad
to see you, for we recognize in the breadth of your knowledge, such
knowledge as is useful to your race, a greater comprehension than any
living man has presented to our generation. [Applause.] We are glad to
see you, because in our judgment you have brought to the analysis and
distribution of this vast knowledge a more penetrating intelligence and
a more thorough insight than any living man has brought even to the
minor topics of his special knowledge. [Applause.] In theology, in
psychology, in natural science, in the knowledge of individual man and
his exposition, and in the knowledge of the world, in the proper sense
of society, which makes up the world, the world worth knowing, the world
worth speaking of, the world worth planning for, the world worth working
for, we acknowledge your labors as surpassing those of any of our kind.
[Applause.] You seem to us to carry away and maintain in the future the
same measure of fame among others that we are told was given in the
Middle Ages to Albertus Magnus, the most learned man of those times,
whose comprehension of theology, of psychology, of natural history, of
politics, of history and of learning comprehended more than any man
since the classic time certainly; and yet it was found of him that his
knowledge was rather an accumulation, and that he had added no new
processes and no new wealth to the learning which he had achieved.
Now, I have said that we are glad to have you see us. You have already
treated us to a very unique piece of work in this reception, and we are
expecting perhaps that the world may be instructed after you are safely
on the other side of the Atlantic in a more intimate and thorough manner
concerning our merits and our few faults. [Applause and laughter.] This
faculty of laying on a dissecting board an entire nation or an entire
age and finding out all the arteries and veins and pulsations of their
life is an extension beyond any that our own medical schools afford. You
give us that knowledge of man which is practical and useful, and
whatever the claims or the debates may be about your system of the
system of those who agree with you, and however it may be compared with
other competing systems that have preceded it, we must all agree that
it is practical, that it is benevolent, that it is serious, and that it
is reverent; that it aims at the highest results in virtue; that it
treats evil, not as eternal, but as evanescent, and that it expects to
arrive at what is sought through the aid of the millennium--that
condition of affairs in which there is the highest morality and the
greatest happiness. [Applause.] And if we can come to that by these
processes and these instructions it matters little to the race whether
it be called scientific morality and mathematical freedom or by another
less pretentious name. [Applause.] You will please fill your glasses
while we propose the health of our guest, Herbert Spencer. [Continued
applause.]
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