CHARACTERISTICS: EMOTIONAL AND ETHICAL
_Emotional--The Genius Loci--Poetry--Science and
Poetry--Art--Humour--Callousness--Nature--Human
Relations--Fundamental Motives_
_Emotional._--Spencer found great delight in scenery and sunsets; he
enjoyed music within certain limits; he was very fond of children, but
he was essentially a man of thought, not of feeling or of action. The
scientific mood dominated him, the artistic and practical moods were in
abeyance. Although he delighted in imaginative construction, he does not
seem to have had much imaginative life. Although he pondered over the
great mysteries of the universe, there was no mystical element in his
composition. Of course no Englishman wears his heart on his sleeve, but
Spencer was more than usually callous, and our sketch would be far from
true if it ignored his emotional limitations.
_The Genius Loci._--To begin with, let us refer to his indifference to
places which are rich in human associations. On his many holidays he
visited not a few of these, and yet he seems to have been rarely touched
or impressed by their significance. He frankly confessed that he took
but little interest in what are called histories, but was interested
only in sociology, and therefore his appreciation of the genius loci
was always limited. He could not people the palaces, the cathedrals, the
castles, the ancient cities that he visited. "When I go to see a ruined
abbey or the remains of a castle, I do not care to learn when it was
built, who lived or died there, or what catastrophes it witnessed. I
never yet went to a battle-field, although often near to one--not having
the slightest curiosity to see a place where many men were killed and a
victory achieved." He had few historical associations even in Rome, and
when at Florence he did not go three miles to Fiesole. The forms and
colours of time-worn walls and arches excited pleasant sentiments, he
said, but that seems to have been all. It was a sort of conchological
interest that he had.
One is unfortunately familiar with the cosmic preoccupation which the
dominant scientific mood is apt to engender, as also with historical
erudition which loses the wood in the trees or leaves Nature out
altogether. These are the defects of our limited mental capacities and
our ill-organised education; but that a man of Spencer's powers could be
so complacent with his limitations is extraordinary. And that he could
write, "It is always the poetry rather than the history of a place that
appeals to me," is more extraordinary still; as if the history were not
half the poetry.
_Poetry._--Spencer's attitude to poetry was characteristic; he took it
all too intellectually and was usually bored. He did not find enough
thought in it, and it may be doubted if he ever surrendered himself to
the artistic mood. At one time he regarded Shelley as "by far the
finest poet of his era," and of "Prometheus Unbound" he said, "It is the
only poem over which I have ever become enthusiastic." It satisfied one
of his organic needs--variety; "I say organic, because I perceive that
it runs throughout my constitution, beginning with likings for food."
Another requirement of poetry for Spencer was intensity. "The matter
embodied is idealised emotion, the vehicle is the idealised language of
emotion." For this reason he was in but small measure attracted to
Wordsworth. "Admitting, though I do, that throughout his works there are
sprinkled many poems of great beauty, my feeling is that most of his
writing is not wine but beer" (i. p. 263). Similarly, he found the
"Iliad" "tedious" and Dante "too continuously rich"... "a gorgeous dress
ill made up."
"About others' requirements I cannot of course speak; but my own
requirement is--little poetry and of the best. Even the true poets are
far too productive." More will agree with him when he says: "The poetry
commonly produced does not bubble up as a spring, but is simply pumped
up; and pumped-up poetry is not worth reading. No one should write verse
if he can help it. Let him suppress it if possible; but if it bursts
forth in spite of him, it may be of value."
In reference to the supposed antagonism between Science and Poetry,
Spencer refers to the story that Keats once proposed after dinner, some
such sentiment as "Confusion to Newton," for having by his analysis
destroyed the wonder of the rainbow. "In so doing," Spencer says, "Keats
did but give more than usually definite expression to the current
belief that science and poetry are antagonistic. Doubtless it is true
that while consciousness is occupied in the scientific interpretation of
a thing, which is now and again "a thing of beauty," it is not occupied
in the aesthetic appreciation of it. But it is no less true that the same
consciousness may at another time be so wholly possessed by the aesthetic
appreciation as to exclude all thought of the scientific interpretation.
The inability of a man of science to take the poetic view simply shows
his mental limitation; as the mental limitation of a poet is shown by
his inability to take the scientific view. The broader mind can take
both. Those who allege this antagonism forget that Goethe, predominantly
a poet, was also a scientific inquirer" (_Autobiography_, i. p. 419).
This is sound sense, and is the excuse for Spencer's own limitations in
regard to poetry; he usually found it too difficult to lay aside the
intellectual preoccupation that gave part of the point to Huxley's jest
in the course of a talk on tragedy: "Oh! you know, Spencer's idea of a
tragedy is a deduction killed by a fact."
The same sort of desperately serious intellectual attitude is seen in
Spencer's remarks on the Opera. His "intolerance of gross breaches of
probability" spoilt his enjoyment of the music. "That serving-men and
waiting-maids should be made poetical and prompted to speak in
_recitative_, because their masters and mistresses happened to be in
love, was too conspicuous an absurdity; and the consciousness of this
absurdity went far towards destroying what pleasure I might otherwise
have derived from the work. It is with music as with painting--a great
divergence from the naturalness in any part so distracts my attention
from the meaning or intention of the whole, as almost to cancel
gratification."
In connection with Spencer's relative lack of interest in poetry
and the drama, or in the works of men like Carlyle and Ruskin, we
have simply to deplore the fact and remember that his mind was
preoccupied with big problems and was dominated by the scientific
mood. From his boyhood he was "thinking about only one thing at a
time," and he had to husband his energies. This is well illustrated
by his note on Carlyle's _Cromwell_: "If, after a thorough
examination of the subject, Carlyle tells us that Cromwell was a
sincere man, I reply that I am heartily glad to hear it, and that I
am content to take his word for it; not thinking it worth while to
investigate all the evidence which has led him to that conclusion."
This might seem to betray a somewhat Philistinish contempt for
historical study and complacence therewith, but the real state of
the case is revealed in the sentence that follows the above: "I
find so many things to think about in this world of ours, that I
cannot afford to spend a week in estimating the character of a man
who lived two centuries ago." What he somewhat strangely calls
"interests of an entirely unlike kind" were at that time strongly
attracting him to Humboldt's _Kosmos_. His outlook was
characteristically cosmic, not human.
_Art._--One of Spencer's heresies concerned the old masters of painting,
whose works he regarded as highly over-rated. On the one hand, he
detected insincerity in the conventional veneration in which the works
of Raphael and Michael Angelo, to name no smaller names, are held.
Subject is not dissociated from execution, and "the judicial faculty has
been mesmerised by the confused halo of piety which surrounds them."
There is an aesthetic orthodoxy from which few are bold enough to
dissent. On the other hand, Spencer detected in the works themselves
"fundamental vices," "the grossest absurdities," "gratuitous
contradictions of Nature," impossible light and shade, and no end of
technical defects in what he was pleased to call "physioscopy."
Art-criticism is probably now more emancipated from authority than it
was when Spencer promulgated his heresies and Ruskin wrote his _Modern
Painters_, and doubtless many experts will admit that some of the
philosopher's strictures are justified. More will probably maintain that
in his intellectual criticism Spencer was blind to artistic genius. In
his criticism, for instance, of Guido's "Phoebus and Aurora," to which
he allowed beauty in composition and grace in drawing, he applied
commonplace physical criteria to show that "absurdity was piled upon
absurdity." "The entire group--the chariot and horses, the hours and
their draperies, and even Phoebus himself--are represented as
illuminated from without: are made visible by some unknown source of
light--some other sun! Stranger still is the next thing to be noted. The
only source of light indicated in the composition--the torch carried by
the flying boy--radiates no light whatever. Not even the face of its
bearer immediately behind it is illumined by it! Nay, this is not all.
The crowning absurdity is that the non-luminous flames of this torch are
themselves illuminated from elsewhere!" And so on.
All this is dismally intellectual, and reminds us of the medical man's
discovery that Botticelli's "Venus," in the Uffizi at Florence, is
suffering from consumption, and should not be riding across the sea in
an open shell, clad so scantily.
_Humour._--Prof. Hudson speaks of Spencer's capital sense of humour, but
it is difficult for a reader of the _Autobiography_ to believe this. The
ponderous way in which he analyses his own little jokes, for instance,
is too quaint to be consistent with much sense of humour. Thus he tells
us that it was only the sudden access of moderately good health that
enabled him to remark to G. H. Lewes, on a little tour they had, that
the Isle of Wight produced very large chops for so small an island. The
fact is that he always took himself and other people very seriously in
little things as well as great. With what physiological seriousness does
he discuss the experience he had coming down Ben Nevis after some wine
on the top of whisky: "I found myself possessed of a quite unusual
amount of agility; being able to leap from rock to rock with rapidity,
ease, and safety; so that I quite astonished myself. There was evidently
an exaltation of the perceptive and motor powers."... "Long-continued
exertion having caused unusually great action of the lungs, the
exaltation produced by stimulation of the brain was not cancelled by the
diminished oxygenation of the blood. The oxygenation had been so much in
excess, that deduction from it did not appreciably diminish the vital
activities."
_Callousness._--In his extreme sang-froid, Spencer sometimes did
violence to the unity of the human spirit. We venture to give one
example. In referring to a ramble in France (_Autobiography_, ii. p.
236), he wrote as follows: "We passed a wayside shrine, at the foot of
which were numerous offerings, each formed of two bits of lath nailed
one across the other. The sight suggested to me the behaviour of an
intelligent and amiable retriever, a great pet at Ardtornish. On coming
up to salute one after a few hours' or a day's absence, wagging her tail
and drawing back her lips so as to simulate a grinning smile, she would
seek around to find a stick, or a bit of paper, or a dead leaf, and
bring it in her mouth; so expressing her desire to propitiate. The dead
leaf or bit of paper was symbolic, in much the same way as was the
valueless cross. Probably, in respect of sincerity of feeling, the
advantage was on the side of the retriever." The animal psychology here
expressed seems pretty bad, and the human psychology much worse.
Turning, however, to pleasanter subjects and correcting any unduly harsh
judgment, we would remind the reader that Spencer was genuinely fond of
music and of scenery, two loves which cover a multitude of sins.
"The often-quoted remark of Kant that two things excited his
awe--the starry heavens and the conscience of man--is not one which
I should make of myself. In me the sentiment has been more
especially produced by three things--the sea, a great mountain, and
fine music in a cathedral. Of these the first has, from familiarity
I suppose, lost much of the effect it originally had, but not the
others."
_Nature._--One of the lasting pleasures of Spencer's life was a simple
delight in the beauty of Nature, especially in varied scenery. Thus he
writes (in 1844) to his friend Lott, regarding a journey into South
Wales: "I wish you had been with me. Your poetical feelings would have
had great gratification. A day's journey through a constantly changing
scene of cloud-capped hills with here and there a sparkling and
romantic river winding perhaps round the base of some ruined castle is a
treat not often equalled. I enjoyed it much. When I reached the seaside,
however, and found myself once again within sound of the breakers, I
almost danced with pleasure. To me there is no place so delightful as
the beach. It is the place where, more than anywhere else, philosophy
and poetry meet--where in fact you are presented by Nature with a
never-ending feast of knowledge and beauty. There is no place where I
can so palpably realise Emerson's remark that 'Nature is the
circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.'"
One evening in August 1861 Spencer stood looking over the Sound of
Mull from Ardtornish house. "The gorgeous colours of clouds and
sky, splendid enough even by themselves to be long remembered, were
reflected from the surface of the sound, at the same time that both
of its sides, along with the mountains of Mull, were lighted up by
the setting sun; and, while I was leaning out of the window gazing
at this scene, music from the piano behind me served as a
commentary. The exaltation of feeling produced was unparalleled in
my experience; and never since has pleasurable emotion risen in me
to the same intensity" (_Autobiography_, ii. p. 69).
Spencer's feeling for Nature was for the most part limited to scenic
effects. Occasionally, when he was at leisure, he felt some "admiration
of the beauties and graces" of flowers, but this was so unusual that it
surprised him, "for, certainly," he says, "intellectual analysis is at
variance with aesthetic appreciation." This does not of course mean that
there is any opposition between scientific interpretation and artistic
enjoyment; it simply means that the scientific mood is quite different
from the artistic mood, and that for most people only one can be
dominant at a time. There are many naturalists of undoubted analytic
skill who have a "love exceeding a simple love of the things that glide
in grasses and rubble of woody wreck"; the modern botanist may still see
the Dryad in the tree; and if the scientific mood is not allowed by
over-specialisation to over-ride all others, increase in knowledge may
mean not increase of sorrow, but a deepening of the joy of life.
_Human Relations._--That Spencer lacked emotional warmth and
expansiveness not only in regard to nature and art, literature and
history, but in his human relations, will be admitted by all, but when a
great man has an obvious limitation there is often a tendency to make
too much of it. We think that Mr Gribble has done this in his
interesting comparison of Spencer and Carlyle,[2] whom he contrasts as
philosopher and sage. We condense his comparison. Both were big men,
both were egotists, both were dyspeptics. Neither suffered fools gladly,
and each tended to be an outspoken judge of all the earth. But while
Carlyle loved and hated intensely, Spencer judged callously. Carlyle was
more like a human being, Spencer "made his heart wait on his
judgment--indefinitely." "What is almost uncanny about Herbert Spencer
is his triumphant superiority to natural instincts." "It is difficult
for the average man to believe that Spencer was a human being of like
passions with himself." In reference to love he said, "Physical beauty
is a _sine qua non_ with me"; "in every walk of life," Mr Gribble says,
"it seems, some _sine qua non_ stood like an angel with a flaming sword
between Herbert Spencer and his emotions." "In the main, he suggests
abstract intellect performing in a morality play, exhibiting no emotion
but intellectual pride." But this tends to suggest that Spencer was a
sort of synthetic ogre, which he certainly was not.
Emotion is distinctively impulsive, and it was Spencer's nature and
deliberate purpose not to yield to the strain of impulse. Yet we must
not misunderstand his reserve and restraint for cold-bloodedness. Some
have referred to the cold impersonal way in which he refers to his
father in the _Autobiography_, but when we consider facts not words we
find that the relations of sympathy, companionship, and mutual
understanding between father and son were very perfect. The human male
is slow to learn that it is not only necessary to love, but to say that
one loves.
In his human relations, Spencer was loyal, if somewhat too candid, as a
friend; he was by no means non-social, but enjoyed conversation with
those who interested him, and was himself a good talker and raconteur;
he was fond of, and was a favourite with children, which is saying a
great deal. One of his friends has called him a thoroughly "clubbable"
man, which is probably going too far, but it was only in later years
that he became an almost monastic recluse and used ear-stoppers. Many
who met him for a short time thought him cold and difficult of access,
with reserved chilly talk "like a book," rather restrained, scrupulous
and severe; but those who knew him well speak of his large, simple, and
eminently sympathetic nature. George Eliot said, "He is a good,
delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him." Prof.
Hudson writes: "The better one knew him the more one grew to understand
and admire his quiet strength, steadiness of ethical purpose, and
unflinching courage, the purity of his motives, his rigid adherence to
righteousness and truth, and his exquisite sense of justice in all
things." He was often terribly provoked by unjust criticisms and stupid
or wilful misunderstandings of his positions, but "in controversy he was
scrupulously fair, aiming at truth, and not at the barren victories of
dialectics."[3]
Besides his love of truth and justice, besides his courage and
self-sacrificing altruism, Spencer reveals a strength of purpose which
has rarely been surpassed. In fact it is difficult to over-estimate the
resolution with which he effected his life-work. Apart from the inherent
difficulty of his task, apart from the long delay of public
appreciation, and apart from ill-health, the pecuniary obstacles were
very serious. Had it not been for the L80 which came to him in 1850
under the Railway Winding-up Act, he would have been unable to publish
_Social Statics_; a bequest from his uncle Thomas made the publication
of the _Principles of Psychology_ possible; he would have been forced to
desist before the completion of _First Principles_ had it not been for a
bequest from his uncle William; at a later stage an American testimonial
and his father's death just saved the situation. Well might he say:--
"It was almost a miracle that I did not sink before success was
reached." When we read the detailed story of his preparation, his
endeavour, his struggle, his achievement, we cannot but feel that
his resolute strenuousness was not far from heroism.
As a nervous subject, Spencer was naturally at times irritable, as
others can be without his excuse, and even petulant, severe in his
utterances, and a little intolerant. But normally he was habitually just
and tried to understand people, if not as persons, at least as
phenomena. What he said of Carlyle was much more just than what Carlyle
said of him, though it may have been what we call less "human." In his
own way Spencer felt that "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner," but
it has been truly said that "the natural man would rather be
passionately denounced than treated as a phenomenon to be
co-ordinated."[4] But this was just Spencer's way, and he applied it
equally to himself.
In speaking of his seven years' experience as a committee-man in
connection with the Athenaeum, he notes certain traits of nature
which were manifest to himself at least. "The most conspicuous is
want of tact. This is an inherited deficiency. The Spencers of the
preceding generation were all characterised by lack of
reticence.... I tended habitually to undisguised utterance of ideas
and feelings; the result being that while I often excited
opposition from not remembering what others were likely to feel, I,
at the same time, disclosed my own intentions in cases where
concealment of them was needful as a means to success"
(_Autobiography_, ii. p. 280).
It must be admitted that there was little out of the common in Herbert
Spencer's daily walk and conversation; in fact, there was a fair share
of common-placeness. Spencer himself was rather amused at those who
came expecting extraordinary intellectual manifestations or traits of
character greatly transcending ordinary ones. There was the pretty
poetess and heiress, whom two of his friends (Chapman and Miss Evans)
selected as a suitable wife for the philosopher, and who seems to have
been as little favourably impressed with him as he was with her.
"Probably she came with high anticipations and was disappointed." There
was the Frenchman who found Spencer playing billiards at the Athenaeum
Club, and "lifted up his hands with an exclamation to the effect that
had he not seen it he could not have believed it." And there was the
American millionaire, Mr Andrew Carnegie, who was so greatly astonished
to hear Spencer say at the dinner-table on the _Servia_, "Waiter, I did
not ask for Cheshire; I asked for Cheddar." To think that a philosopher
should be so fastidious about his cheese!
Spencer seems never to have fallen in love, and his early utterances on
marriage savour somewhat of the non-mammalian type of bachelor. "If as
somebody said (Socrates, was it not?)--marrying is a thing which whether
you do it or do it not you will repent, it is pretty clear that you may
as well decide by a toss up. It's a choice of evils, and the two sides
are pretty nearly balanced." He was too wise to marry out of a sense of
duty, and too preoccupied to marry by inclination. "As for marrying
under existing circumstances, that is out of the question; and as for
twisting circumstances into better shape, I think it is too much
trouble."... "On the whole I am quite decided not to be a drudge; and as
I see no probability of being able to marry without being a drudge,
why, I have pretty well given up the idea." As a matter of fact,
however, he was not altogether so callous as his words suggest. Indeed
when balancing the alternatives of emigrating to New Zealand or staying
in England, he gave 110 marks to the latter and 301 to the former,
allowing no less than 100 for the marriage which emigration would render
feasible!
In short Spencer could not marry when he would, and would not when he
could. He had a great admiration for women, especially beautiful women;
he had a natural fondness for children and got on well with them; but in
his struggling years he could not have supported a wife and family, and
besides he was very hard to please. On the one hand there was the
economic difficulty, for he felt assured that his friend was right in
saying "Had you married there would have been no system of philosophy."
It does not seem to have occurred to him that there might have been a
better one! On the other hand, there was his eternally critical
attitude. "Physical beauty is a _sine qua non_ with me; as was once
unhappily proved where the intellectual traits and the emotional traits
were of the highest." From the point of view of the race it seems a pity
that his _sine qua non_ was so stringent; an emotional graft on the
Spencerian stock might have given us for instance a new religious
genius. But Spencer's own conclusion was:--
"I am not by nature adapted to a relation in which perpetual
compromise and great forbearance are needful. That extreme critical
tendency which I have above described, joined with a lack of
reticence no less pronounced, would, I fear, have caused perpetual
domestic differences. After all my celibate life has probably been
the best for me, as well as the best for some unknown other."
A critical yet appreciative estimate of Spencer has been given by Prof.
A. S. Pringle-Pattison, which we venture to quote to correct our own
partiality.
"Paradoxical as the statement may seem in view of Spencer's achievement,
the mind here pourtrayed, save for the command of scientific facts and
the wonderful faculty of generalisation, is commonplace in the range of
its ideas; neither intellectually nor morally is the nature sensitive to
the finest issues. Almost uneducated except for a fair acquaintance with
mathematics and the scientific knowledge which his own tastes led him to
acquire, with the prejudices and limitations of middle-class English
Nonconformity, but untouched by its religion, Spencer appears in the
early part of his life as a somewhat ordinary young man. His ideals and
habits did not differ perceptibly from those of hundreds of intelligent
and straight-living Englishmen of his class. And to the end, in spite of
his cosmic outlook, there remains this strong admixture of the British
Philistine, giving a touch almost of banality to some of his sayings and
doings. But, just because the picture is so faithfully drawn, giving us
the man in his habit as he lived, with all his limitations and
prejudices (and his own consciousness of these limitations, expressed
sometimes with a passing regret, but oftener with a childish pride),
with all his irritating pedantries and the shallowness of his emotional
nature, we can balance against these defects his high integrity and
unflinching moral courage, his boundless faith in knowledge and his
power of conceiving a great ideal and carrying it through countless
difficulties to ultimate realisation, and a certain boyish simplicity of
character as well as other gentler human traits, such as his fondness
for children, his dependence upon the society of his kind, and his
capacity to form and maintain some life-long friendships. A kindly
feeling for the narrator grows as we proceed; and most unprejudiced
readers will close the book with a genuine respect and esteem for the
philosopher in his human aspect."
_Fundamental Motives._--There seems something approaching
self-vivisection in Spencer's analysis of the motives prompting his
career, and the reader who is not moved by it must be callous indeed. We
shall not do more than refer to the general results arrived at.
"So deep down is the gratification which results from the
consciousness of efficiency, and the further consciousness of the
applause which recognised efficiency brings, that it is impossible
for any one to exclude it. Certainly, in my own case, the desire
for such recognition has not been absent. Yet, so far as I can
remember, ambition was not the primary motive of my first efforts,
nor has it been the primary motive of my larger and later
efforts."... "Still, as I have said, the desire for achievement and
the honour which achievement brings, have doubtless been large
factors."... "Though from the outset I have had in view the effects
to be wrought on men's beliefs and courses of action--especially in
respect of social affairs and governmental functions; yet the
sentiment of ambition has all along been operative."
The other prompters were the pleasure of intellectual hunting and "the
architectonic instinct." On the one hand, "It has been with me a source
of continual pleasure, distinct from other pleasures, to evolve new
thoughts, and to be in some sort a spectator of the way in which, under
persistent contemplation, they gradually unfolded into completeness." On
the other hand, "during thirty years it has been a source of frequent
elation to see each division, and each part of a division, working out
into congruity with the rest--to see each component fitting into its
place, and helping to make a harmonious whole." "Once having become
possessed by the conception of Evolution in its comprehensive form, the
desire to elaborate and set it forth was so strong that to have passed
life in doing something else would, I think, have been almost
intolerable." Like an architect he was restless till his edifice was
completed, and on working towards this there was aesthetic as well as
intellectual gratification. "There appears to be in me a dash of the
artist, which has all along made the achievement of beauty a stimulus;
not, of course, beauty as commonly conceived, but such beauty as may
exist in a philosophical structure."
Spencer had a high sense of his responsibility to deliver the truth
that was in him, and he had a strong faith in human progress. It is
in the light of these two sentiments, perhaps, that we best
understand the heroism of his strenuous life. "Not only is it
rational to infer that changes like those which have been going on
during civilisation will continue to go on, but it is irrational to
do otherwise. Not he who believes that adaptation will increase is
absurd, but he who doubts that it will increase is absurd. Lack of
faith in such further evolution of humanity as shall harmonise with
its conditions adds but another to the countless illustrations of
inadequate consciousness of causation. One who, leaving behind both
primitive dogmas and primitive ways of looking at them, has, while
accepting scientific conclusions, acquired those habits of thought
which science generates, will regard the conclusion above drawn as
inevitable" (_Data of Ethics_, chap. x.).
"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth,
lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure
himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.
Let him duly realise the fact that opinion is the agency through
which character adapts external arrangements to itself--that his
opinion rightly forms part of this agency--is a unit of forces,
constituting, with other such units, the general power which works
out social changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give
full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce
what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these
sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He with
all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an
accident, but a product of his time. He must remember that while he
is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that
his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not
carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider
himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the
Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown produces in him a certain
belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that
belief" (_First Principles_, p. 123).
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Francis Gribble: "Fortnightly Review," 1904, p. 984.
[3] Gribble, _op. cit._
[4] Gribble, _op. cit._