What knowledge is of most worth? The uniform reply is: Science.
This is the verdict on all counts. For direct self-preservation, or
the maintenance of life and health, the all-important knowledge
is--science. For that indirect self-preservation which we call
gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest value is--science.
For the discharge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to
be found only in science. For the interpretation of national life,
past and present, without which the citizen can not rightly
regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is--science. Alike for
the most perfect production and present enjoyment of art in all its
forms, the needful preparation is still--science. And for purposes
of discipline--intellectual, moral, religious--the most efficient
study is, once more--science.
--_Essay on Education_
[Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER]
In Derby, England, April Twenty-seventh, Eighteen Hundred Twenty,
Herbert Spencer, the only child of his parents, was born. His mother
died in his childhood, so he really never had any vivid recollection of
her, but hearsay, fused with memory and ideality, vitalized all. And
thus to him, to the day of his death, his mother stood for gentleness,
patience, tenderness, intuitive insight, and a love that never grew
faint. Man makes his mother in his own image.
Herbert Spencer's father was a school-teacher, and in very moderate
circumstances. Little Herbert could not remember when he did not go to
school, and yet as a real scholar, he never went to school at all. The
family lived over the schoolroom, and while the youngster yet wore
dresses his father would hold him in his arms, and carry him around the
room as he instructed his classes. William George Spencer was both
father and mother to Herbert, and used to sing to him lullabies as the
sun went down.
After school there were always walks afield, and in the evening the
brother of the school-master would call, and then there was much
argument as to Why and What, Whence and Whither.
People talk gossip, we are told, for lack of a worthy theme. These two
Spencers--one a school-master and the other a clergyman--found the time
too short for their discussions. In their walks and talks they were
always examining, comparing, classifying, selecting, speculating.
Flowers, plants, bugs, beetles, birds, trees, weeds, earth and rocks
were scrutinized and analyzed.
Where did it come from? How did it get here?
I am told that lions never send their cubs away to be educated by a
cubless lioness and an emasculated lion. The lion learns by first
playing at the thing and then doing it.
A motherless boy, brought up by an indulgent father, one might prophesy,
would be sure to rule the father and be spoiled himself through omission
of the rod. But in the boy problem all signs fail. The father taught by
exciting curiosity and animating his pupils to work out problems and
make discoveries--keeping his discipline well out of sight. How well the
plan worked is revealed in the life of Herbert Spencer himself; and his
book, "Education," is based on the ideas evolved by his father, to whom
he gives much credit. No man ever had so divine a right to compile a
book on education as Herbert Spencer, for he proved in his own life
every principle he laid down.
On all excursions Herbert was taken along--because he couldn't be left
at home, you know. He listened to the conversations and learned by
hearing the older pupils recite.
All out-of-doors was fairyland to him--a curiosity-shop filled with
wonderful things--over your head, under your feet, all around was
life--action, pulsing life, everything in motion--going somewhere,
evolving into something else.
This habit of observation, adoration and wonder--filled with pleasurable
emotions and recollections from the first--lasted the man through life,
and allowed him, even with a frail constitution, to round out a long
period of severe mental work, with never a tendency to die at the top.
Herbert Spencer never wrote a thing more true than this: "The man to
whom in boyhood information came in dreary tasks, along with threats of
punishment, is unlikely to be a student in after-years; while those to
whom it came in natural forms, at the proper times, and who remember its
facts as not only interesting in themselves, but as a long series of
gratifying successes, are likely to continue through life that
self-instruction begun in youth."
When thirteen years old Herbert went to live with his uncle, the
Reverend Thomas Spencer, at Bath. Here the same methods of education
were continued that had been begun at home--conversation, history in the
form of story-telling, walks and talks, and mathematical calculations
carried out as pleasing puzzles. In mathematics the boy made rapid
progress, but the faculty of observation was the dominant one. Every
phase of cloud and sky, of water and earth, rock and mountain, bird and
bush, plant and tree, was curious to him. He kept a journal of his
observations, which had the double advantage of deepening his
impressions by recounting them, and second, it taught him the use of
language.
The best way to learn to write is to write. Herbert Spencer never
studied grammar until he had learned to write. He took his grammar at
sixty, which is a good age to begin this interesting study, as by that
time you have largely lost your capacity to sin. Men who swim
exceedingly well are not those who have taken courses in the theory of
swimming at natatoriums from professors of the amphibian art--they were
boys who just jumped in. Correspondence-schools for the taming of
broncos are as naught; and treatises on the gentle art of wooing are of
no avail--follow Nature's lead. Grammar is the appendenda vermiformis of
pedagogics: it is as useless as the letter q in the alphabet, or as the
proverbial two tails to a cat, which no cat ever had, and the finest cat
in the world, the Manx cat, has no tail at all.
"The literary style of most university men is commonplace, when not
positively bad," wrote Herbert Spencer in his old age. "Educated
Englishmen all write alike," said Taine. That is to say, they have no
literary style, for style is character, individuality--the style is the
man. And grammar tends to obliterate all individuality. No study is so
irksome to everybody, except to the sciolists who teach it, as grammar.
It remains forever a bad taste in the mouth of the man of ideas, and has
weaned bright minds innumerable from all desire to express themselves
through the written word. Grammar is the etiquette of words, and the man
who does not know how to properly salute his grandmother on the street
until he has consulted a book, is always so troubled about his tenses
that his fancies break through language and escape.
Orators who keep their thoughts upon the proper way to gesticulate in
curves impress nobody. If poor grammar were a sin against decency, or an
attempt to poison the minds of the people, it might be wise enough to
hire men to protect the well of English from defilement. But a
stationary language is a dead one--moving water only is pure--and the
well that is not fed by springs is a breeding-place for disease. Let men
express themselves in their own way, and if they express themselves
poorly, look you, their punishment shall be that no one will read them.
Oblivion, with her smother-blanket, waits for the writer who has nothing
to say and says it faultlessly. In the making of hare-soup, I am told
the first requisite is to catch your hare. The literary scullion who has
anything to offer a hungry world will doubtless find a way to fricassee
it.
* * * * *
When seventeen, Herbert Spencer was apprenticed to a surveyor on the
London and Birmingham Railway. The pay was meager--board and keep and
five pounds for the first year, with ten pounds the second year "if he
deserved it." However, school-teachers and clergymen are used to small
reward, and to make a living for one's self was no small matter to the
Spencers. The youth who has gotten his physical growth should earn his
own living, this as a necessary factor in his further mental evolution.
Neither William George Spencer, Herbert's father, nor Thomas, his uncle,
seemed ever to anticipate that they were helping to develop the greatest
thinker of his time. They themselves were obscure men, and quite happy
therein, and if young Herbert could attain to a fair degree of physical
health, make his living as an honest surveyor or as a teacher of
mathematics, it would be all one could reasonably hope for. And thus
they lived out the measure of their days, and passed away unaware that
this boy they claimed in partnership was to be the maker of an epoch.
Young Spencer began his surveying work by carrying a flag, and soon he
was advanced to "chainman." His skill in mathematics made his services
valuable, and his willingness to sit up nights and work out the
measurements of the day, so pleased his employer that the letter of the
contract was waived and he was paid ten pounds for his first year's
work, instead of five. He invented shorter methods for bridges and
culverts, and I believe was the first engineer to build a cantilever
railroad-bridge in England.
When he was twenty-one he had so thoroughly mastered the work that his
employers offered to place him in charge of a construction-gang at a
salary of two hundred pounds a year, which was then considered high pay.
He, however, loved liberty more than money, and his tastes were in the
direction of invention and science, rather than in working out an
immediate practical success for himself.
He returned home and invented a scheme for making type; and had another
plan for watchmaking, which he illustrated with painstaking designs.
Half of his time was spent in the fields, and he made a large botanical
collection--indexing it carefully, with many notes and comments.
He also wrote articles for the "Civil Engineers' and Artisans' Journal."
For these he received no pay, but the acceptance of manuscript gives a
great glow to a writer's cosmos: young Spencer was encouraged in the
belief that he had something to offer the public. But his father and
kinsmen saw only failure in these days of dawdling; and the money being
gone, Herbert Spencer, aged twenty-two, went up to London to try to get
a renewal of the offer from his old employer.
But things had changed--chances gone are gone forever, and he was told
that opportunity knocks but once at each man's door. Sadly he returned
home--not disappointed in himself, but depressed that he should
disappoint others. His inventions languished--nobody was interested in
them.
To get a living was the problem, and writing seemed the only way. And so
he prepared a series of articles for "The Non-Conformist," and there was
enough non-conformity in them so he was paid a small sum for his work.
It proved this, though--he could get a living by his pen.
In these "Non-Conformist" articles, Spencer put forth a daring statement
concerning the evolution of the soldier, that straightway made him a few
enemies, and gave his clerical uncle gooseflesh. His hypothesis was
this: When man first evolved out of the Stone Age, and began to live in
villages, the oldest and wisest individual was regarded as patriarch or
chief. This chief appointed certain men to punish wrongdoers and keep
order. But there were always a few who would not work and who, through
their violence and contumacious spirit, were finally driven from the
camp. Or more likely they fled to escape punishment--which is the same
thing--for they were outcasts. These men found refuge in the mountain
fastnesses and congregated for two reasons--one, so they could avoid
capture, and the other so they could swoop down and "secure their own."
Robbery and commerce came hand in hand, and piracy is almost as natural
as production.
Finally, the robbers became such a problem to industry that terms were
made with them. Their tribute took the form of a tax, and to make sure
that this tax was paid, the robbers protected the people against other
robbers. And then, for the first time, the world saw a standing army. An
army has two purposes--to protect the people, and to collect the tax for
protecting the people.
At the headquarters of this army grew up a court, and all the
magnificent splendor of a capitol centered around the captains. In fact,
the word "capitol" means the home of the captain.
Herbert Spencer did not say that a soldier was a respectable brigand,
and that a lawyer is a man who protects us from lawyers, but he came so
close to it that his immediate friends begged him to moderate his
expressions for his own safety.
Spencer also at the same time traced the evolution of the priest. He
showed how the "holy man" was one frenzied with religious ecstasy, who
went away and lived in a cave. Occasionally this man came back to beg,
to preach and to do good. In order to succeed in his begging, he
revealed his peculiar psychic powers, and then reinforced these with
claims of supernatural abilities. These claims were not exactly founded
upon truth, but once put forth were in time believed by those who
advanced them.
This priest, who claimed to have influence with the power of the
Unseen, found early favor with the soldier--and the soldier and the
priest naturally joined hands. The soldier protected the priest and the
priest absolved the soldier. One dictated man's place in this world--the
other in the next.
The calm way in which Herbert Spencer reasoned these things out, and his
high literary style, which made him unintelligible to all those whose
minds were not of scientific bent, and his emphatic statement that what
is, is right, and all the steps in man's development mean a mounting to
better things, saved him from the severe treatment that greeted, say,
Charles Bradlaugh, who translated the higher criticisms for the hoi
polloi.
Spencer's first essays on "The Proper Sphere of Government," done in his
early twenties for "The Non-Conformist" and "The Economist," outlined
his occupation for life--he was to be a writer. He became assistant
editor of the "Westminster Review," and contributed to various literary
and scientific journals.
These essays, enlarged, rewritten and revised, finally emerged in
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one in the form of "Social Statics, or the
Conditions Essential to Human Happiness."
This book, so bold in its radical suggestions, now almost universally
admitted, was printed at the author's expense--a fact that should put a
quietus for all time upon all those indelicate and sarcastic allusions
concerning "when the author prints." There was an edition of seven
hundred fifty copies of the book, and it took every shilling the young
man had saved, and a few borrowed pounds as well, to pay the bill.
The book made no splash in the literary sea--nobody read it except a
dozen good people who did so as a matter of friendship.
After six years there were still five hundred copies left, and the
author wrote this slightly ironical line: "I am glad the public is
taking plenty of time to fully digest my work before passing judgment
upon it. Of all things, hasty criticisms are to be regretted."
Yet there was one person who read Herbert Spencer's first book with
close consideration and profound sympathy. This was a young woman, the
same age as Spencer, who had come up to London from the country to make
her fortune. Her name was Mary Ann Evans.
* * * * *
In "Notes and Comments," Spencer's last book, published two years before
his death, are several quotations and allusions to George Eliot. No
other woman is mentioned in the volume.
Herbert Spencer and Mary Ann Evans first met at the house of the editor
of the "Westminster Review" about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one.
Their tastes, aptitudes and inclinations were much the same. They were
born the same year; both were brought up in the country; both were
naturalists by inclination, and scientists because they could not help
it. "Social Statics" made a profound impression on George Eliot, and she
protested to the last that it was the best book the author ever wrote.
He had read her "Essay on Spinoza," and remembered it so well that he
repeated a page of it the first time they met. They loved the same
things, and united, too, in their dislikes. Both were democrats, and the
cards, curds and custards of society were to them as naught. In a few
months after the first meeting, George Eliot wrote to a friend in
Warwickshire: "The bright side of my life, after the affection for my
old friends, is the new and delightful friendship which I have found in
Herbert Spencer. We see each other every day, and in everything we enjoy
a delightful comradeship. If it were not for him my life would be
singularly arid."
The Synthetic Philosophy was taking form in Spencer's mind, and
together they threshed out the straw and garnered the grain. She was
getting to be a necessity to Spencer--and he saw no reason why the
beautiful friendship should not continue just this way for years and
years. Both were literary grubbers and lived in boarding-houses of the
Class B variety.
And here George Henry Lewes appeared upon the scene. Legend says that
Spencer introduced Lewes to Miss Evans, and both Miss Evans and Mr.
Spencer were a bit in awe of him, for he was a literary success, and
they were willing to be. Lewes had written at this time sixteen
books--novels, essays, scientific treatises, poems, and a drama. He
spoke five languages, had studied medicine, theology, and had been a
lecturer and actor. He was small, had red hair, combed his whiskers by
the right oblique, and wore a yellow necktie. Thackeray says he was the
most learned and versatile man he ever knew, "and if I should see him in
Piccadilly, perched on a white elephant, I would not be in the least
surprised."
None of the various ventures of Lewes had paid very well, but he had
great hopes, and money enough to ride in a cab. He gave advice, and
radiated good-cheer wherever he went.
In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four Lewes and Miss Evans disappeared from
London, having gone to Germany, leaving letters behind, stating that
thenceforward they wished to be considered as man and wife. Lewes was
in his fortieth year, and slightly bald; George Eliot was thirty-six,
and there were silver threads among the gold.
They had taken the philosophy of "Social Statics" in dead earnest.
Herbert Spencer lost appetite, ceased work, roamed through the park
aimlessly, and finally fell into a fit of sickness--"night air, and too
close confinement to mental tasks," the doctor said.
Spencer was not a marrying man--he was wedded to science, yet he craved
the companionship of the female mind. Had he and Miss Evans married, he
would doubtless have continued his work just the same. He would have
absorbed her into his being--they would have lived in a garret, and
possibly we might have had a better Synthetic Philosophy, if that were
possible.