PREPARATION FOR LIFE-WORK
_More Inventions--Sub-editing--Avowal of
Evolutionism--Friendships--Books and Essays--Crystallisation
of his Thought--Settling to Life-work_
Thrown out of regular employment once more, Spencer was left free for a
time to follow his own bent. He lived a "miscellaneous and rather futile
kind of life," reading a little and thinking much over a proposed book
on Social Statics, holidaying a good deal and trying in vain to make
money by inventions.
_More Inventions._--In 1845 he had a scheme of quasi-aerial locomotion:
not a flying machine but "something uniting terrestrial traction with
aerial suspension"; but even on paper it broke down. In 1846 he patented
an effective "binding pin" for fastening loose sheets, which might have
been a financial success if it had been properly pushed. About the same
time he was speculating on a method of multiplying decorative
patterns,--a sort of "mental kaleidoscope," and on a systematic
nomenclature for colours, analogous to that on which the points of the
compass are named. More ambitious was a new planing engine and an
improvement in type-making, but neither got much beyond the paper stage.
In fact Spencer discovered, as so many have done, that it is one thing
to invent and another thing to make inventions boil the pot. For a year
and a half, he lamented, time and energy and money had been simply
thrown away. The proceeds of the binding pin just about served to pay
for his share in the cost of the planing machine patent.
Seven years spent in experimenting towards a livelihood had not brought
Spencer much success. In point of fact he was "stranded," and there was
talk of emigration to New Zealand, or of "reverting to the ancestral
profession" of teaching, but the year of suspense ended with his
appointment (1848) as sub-editor in _The Economist_ office, at a salary
of one hundred guineas a year. "Thus an end was at last put to the
seemingly futile part of my life which filled the space between
twenty-one and twenty-eight--futile in respect of material progress, but
in other respects perhaps not futile."
He had enjoyed a varied intercourse with men and things during these
seven lean years of railway-making, sub-editing, experimenting,
inventing; he had had experience of field work and office work, of doing
what he was told and of exercising authority; he had had time for
drawing, modelling, music, and some natural history; he had come to know
something of life's ups and downs. "In short, there had been gained a
more than usually heterogeneous, though superficial, acquaintance with
the world, animate and inanimate. And along with the gaining of it had
gone a running commentary of speculative thought about the various
matters presented." _Vivendo discimus._
_Sub-editing._--Spencer's duties as sub-editor of _The Economist_ were
not onerous; he had abundant leisure for reading and reflection, for
music and that pleasant conversation which is one of the ends of life.
He had great Sunday evening talks with his broad-minded philanthropic
uncle Thomas who had come to live in London, and he began to know
interesting people, notably, perhaps, Mr G. H. Lewes. His reading was
mainly in connection with the journal he had charge of, and Coleridge's
_Idea of Life_, with its doctrine of individuation, was the only serious
work which seems to have left any impression during that early period.
He tried Ruskin but recoiled disappointed from his "multitudinous
absurdities." He also tried vegetarianism but found that it lowered his
bodily and mental vigour.
He worked hard at his first book, sitting late over it with an assiduity
to which he looked back with astonishment in after years. The subject of
the book was "A system of Social and Political Morality" and he had
great searchings for a suitable title, his own preference for
"Demostatics" yielding finally in favour of "Social Statics." This
phrase had been used by Comte as the heading of one of the divisions of
his Sociology, but Spencer was quite unaware of this, and at that time
"knew nothing more of Auguste Comte, than that he was a French
philosopher." There were also great difficulties in securing
publication, although to get the work printed and circulated without
loss was as much as he hoped for. "At that time I was, and have since
remained, one of those classed by Dr Johnson as fools--one whose motive
in writing books was not, and never has been, that of making money."
What Spencer calls "an idle year" (1850-1) followed the publication of
_Social Statics_, but it was then that he attended a course of lectures
by Prof. Owen on Comparative Osteology, and doubtless got a firmer hold
of those principles of organic architecture which make even dry bones
live. It was then, too, that he had walks with George Henry Lewes, which
were profitable on both sides. Lewes received an impulse which awakened
interest in scientific inquiries, and Spencer became interested in
philosophy at large. He read Lewes's _Biographical History of
Philosophy_, and there was one memorable ramble during which a volume by
Milne-Edwards in Lewes's bag was the means of vivifying for Spencer the
idea of "the physiological division of labour." "Though the conception
was not new to me, as is shown towards the end of _Social Statics_, yet
the mode of formulating it was; and the phrase thereafter played a part
in the course of my thought." About the same time, in preparing a review
of Carpenter's _Physiology_, he came across von Baer's formula
expressing the course of development through which every living creature
passes--"the change from homogeneity to heterogeneity"; and from this
very important consequences ensued.
Through Lewes he got to know Carlyle, but the acquaintance was never
deepened. While he admired Carlyle's vigour and originality, he was
repelled by his passionate incoherence of thought, his prejudices, his
dogmatism, his "insensate dislike of science." "Carlyle's nature was one
which lacked co-ordination, alike intellectually and morally. Under both
aspects, he was, in a great measure, chaotic." To Carlyle, on the other
hand, Spencer appeared "an unmeasurable ass."
_Avowal of Evolutionism._--In 1852 Spencer definitely began his work as
a pioneer of Evolution Doctrine by publishing the famous _Leader_
article on "The Development Hypothesis," in which he avowed his belief
that the whole world of life is the result of an age-long process of
natural transmutation. In the same year he wrote for _The Westminster
Review_ another important essay, "A Theory of Population deduced from
the General Law of Animal Fertility," in which he sought to show that
the degree of fertility is inversely proportionate to the grade of
development, or conversely that the attainment of higher degrees of
evolution must be accompanied by lower rates of multiplication. Towards
the close of the article he came within an ace of recognising that the
struggle for existence was a factor in organic evolution. It is
profoundly instructive to find that at a time when pressure of
population was practically interesting men's minds, not Spencer only,
but Darwin and Wallace, were being independently led from this social
problem to a biological theory of organic evolution. There could be no
better illustration, as Prof. Geddes has pointed out, of the Comtian
thesis that science is a "social phenomenon."
_Friendships._--About this time a strong friendship arose between
Spencer and Miss Evans (George Eliot). To him she was "the most
admirable woman, mentally," he ever met, and he speaks enthusiastically
of her large intelligence working easily, her remarkable philosophical
powers, her habitual calm, her deep and broad sympathies. It is
interesting to learn that he strongly advised her to write novels, and
that she tried in vain to induce him to read Comte. As they were often
together and the best of friends, the gossips had it that he was in love
with her and that they were about to be married. "But neither of these
reports was true."
Another friendship, formed about the same time, was an important factor
in Spencer's life; he got to know Huxley and thus came into close touch
with a scientific worker of the first rank, useful alike in suggestion
and in criticism. He found another friend in Tyndall, whom he greatly
admired for his combination of the poetic with the scientific mood, for
"his passion for Nature quite Wordsworthian in its intensity," and for
his interest in "the relations between science at large and the great
questions which lie beyond science."
In 1853, by the death of his uncle Thomas, who had persistently
overworked himself, Spencer received a bequest of L500. On the strength
of this and the extended literary connections which the good offices of
Mr Lewes and Mr (afterwards Prof.) David Masson had secured for him, he
resigned his sub-editorship of _The Economist_ in order to obtain
leisure for larger works. He always believed in burning his ships before
a struggle.
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 Treport, 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 Linnaean 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.