We often see mention, by the ready writers, of "mental equals" and
"perfect mates," but in all business partnerships, one man is the court
of last appeal by popular acclaim. If power is absolutely equal, the
engine stops on the center. Twins may look exactly alike, but one is the
spokesman. In all literary collaboration, one does the work and the
other looks on.
When George Henry Lewes took Mary Ann Evans as his wife, that was the
last of Lewes. He became her inspiration, secretary, protector, friend
and slave. And this was all beautiful and right.
I believe it was Augustine Birrell who said, "George Henry Lewes was the
busy drone to a queen bee." It probably is well that Mr. Spencer and
Miss Evans did not marry--they were too much alike--they might have
gotten into competition with each other.
George Eliot had a poise and dignity in her character that kept the
versatile Lewes just where he belonged; and at the same time she lived
her own life and preserved in ascending degree the strong and simple
beauties of her character. Truly was George Eliot "a citizen of the
sacred city of fine minds--the Jerusalem of Celestial Art." Lewes was
the tug that puffed and steamed and brought the majestic steamship into
port.
For one book George Eliot received a sum equal to forty thousand
dollars, and her income after "Adam Bede" was published was never less
than ten thousand dollars a year.
Spencer lived out his days in the boarding-house, and until after he was
seventy, had not reached a point where absolute economy was not in
order.
Spencer faced the Universe alone, and tried to solve its mysteries. Not
only did he live alone, with no close confidants or friends, but when he
died he left not a single living relative nearer than the fourth
generation. With him died the name.
* * * * *
The leading note in "Social Statics" is a plea for the liberty of the
individual. That government is best which governs least. The liberty of
each, limited only by the liberty of all, is the rule to which society
must conform in order to attain the highest development. Governments
have no business to scrutinize the life and belief of the individual.
Interference should only come where one man interferes with the
liberties of another.
Liberty of action is the first requisite to progress, and the prime
essential in human happiness. It is better that men have wrong opinions
than no opinions--through our blunders we reach the light.
Government is for man, and not man for government. Men wish to do what
is best for themselves, and eventually they will, if let alone, but they
can only grow through constant practise and frequent mistakes. Plato's
plan for an ideal republic provided rules and laws for the guidance of
the individual. In the Mosaic Laws it is the same: every circumstance
and complication of life is thought out, and the law tells the
individual what he shall do, and what he shall not do. That is to say, a
few men were to do the thinking for the many. And the argument that
plain people should not be allowed to think for themselves, since the
wise know better what is for their good, is exactly the argument used by
slaveholders: that they can take better care of the man than the man can
of himself.
There is a certain plausibility and truth in this proposition. It is all
a point of view.
But to Herbert Spencer there was little difference between enslavement
of the mind and enslavement of the body. Both were essentially wrong in
this--they interfered with Nature's law of evolution, and anything
contrary to Nature must pay the penalty of pain and death. All forms of
enslavement react upon the slaveholder, and a society founded on force
can not evolve--and not to evolve is to die. The wellsprings of Nature
must not be dammed--and in fact can not be dammed but for a day.
Overflow, revolution and violence are sure to follow. This is the
general law; and so give the man liberty. One man's rights end only
where another man's begin.
The idea of evolution, as opposed to a complete creation, was in the
mind of Spencer as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. In that year
he said, "Creation still goes forward, and to what supreme heights man
may yet attain no one can say."
By a sort of general misapprehension, Darwin is usually given credit for
the discovery and elucidation of the Law of Evolution, but the "Origin
of Species" did not appear until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and both
Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace had stated, years before, that the
theological dogma of a complete creation had not a scintilla of proof
from the world of nature and science, while there was much general
proof that the animal and vegetable kingdom had evolved from lower
forms, and was still ascending.
The usual idea of the clergy of Christendom was that if the account of
creation given by Moses were admitted to be untrue, then the Bible in
all its parts would be declared untrue, and religion would go by the
board. Now that the theory of evolution is everywhere accepted, even in
the churches, we see how groundless were the fears. All that is
beautiful and best we still have in religion in a degree never before
known.
In an essay on "Manners and Fashion," published in the "Westminster
Review" of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, Herbert Spencer says: "Forms,
ceremonies and even beliefs are cast aside only when they become
hindrances--only when some finer and better plan has been formed; and
they bequeath to us all the good that was in them. The abolition of
tyrannical laws has left the administration of justice not only
unimpaired, but purified. Dead and buried creeds have not carried down
with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists,
uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of
justice, kindness and beauty embodied in our cumbrous forms will live
perennially, when the forms themselves have been repudiated and
forgotten."
In the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, Spencer issued his "Principles
of Psychology," showing that the doctrine of evolution was then with him
a fixed fact. The struggle was on, and from now forward his life was
enlisted to viewing this theory from every side, anticipating every
possible objection to it, and restating the case in its relation to
every phase of life and nature.
Spencer's income was small, but his wants were few, and a single room in
a boarding-house sufficed for both workshop and sleeping-room. To a
degree, he now largely ceased original investigations and made use of
the work of others. His intuitive mind, long trained in analytical
research, was able to sift the false from the true, the trite from the
peculiar, the exceptional from the normal.
* * * * *
The year Eighteen Hundred Sixty should be marked on history's page with
a silver star, for it was in that year that Herbert Spencer issued his
famous prospectus setting forth that he was engaged in formulating a
system of philosophy which he proposed to issue in periodical parts to
subscribers. He then followed with an outline of the ground he intended
to cover. Ten volumes would be issued, and he proposed to take twenty
years to complete the task.
The entire Synthetic Philosophy was then in his mind and he knew what he
wanted to do. The courage and faith of the man were dauntless. Michael
Rossetti once said, "Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall and Wallace owe
nothing to the universities of England, except for the scorn and
opposition that have been offered them." But patriotic Americans and
true are glad to remember that it was Professor E. L. Youmans of Yale
who made it possible for Spencer to carry out his great plan. Five years
after the prospectus was issued, Spencer was again penniless and was
thinking seriously of abandoning the project. Youmans heard of this and
reissued the prospectus, and sent it out among the thinking men of the
world, asking them to subscribe. The announcement was then followed up
by letters, and Youmans forced the issue until the sum of seven thousand
dollars was raised. This he took over to Europe in person and presented
to Spencer, with a gold watch and a box of cigars. Youmans found
Spencer at his boarding-house, and together they wandered out in the
park, where Youmans presented the philosopher the box of cigars. The
great man took out one, cut it in three parts and proceeded to smoke
one, then Youmans handed him the gold watch and the draft for the money.
Spencer took the gifts of the watch and cigars and was much moved, but
when it was followed by the draft for seven thousand dollars, he merely
gasped and said: "Wonderful! Magnificent! Magnificent! Wonderful!" and
smoked his third of a cigar in silence. And when he spoke, it was to
say: "I think I will have to revise what I wrote in 'First Principles'
on the matter of divine providence."
Those who have read Spencer's will must remember that this watch,
presented to him by his American friends, is given a special paragraph.
Spencer once said to Huxley, "From the day I first carried that watch,
every good thing I needed has been brought and laid at my feet."
"If I have succeeded in my art, it is simply because I have been well
sustained," said Henry Irving in one of his modest, flattering, yet
charming little speeches.
Sir Henry might have gone on and said that no man succeeds unless well
sustained, and happy is that man who has radioactivity of spirit enough
to attract to him loving and loyal helpers who scintillate his rays.
The average individual does not know very much about Edward L. Youmans,
but no man ever did greater work in popularizing nature study in
America. And if for nothing else, let his name be deathless for two
things: he inspired John Burroughs with the thirst to see and know--and
then to write--and he introduced Herbert Spencer to the world. It is
easy to say that Burroughs was peeping his shell when Youmans discovered
him, and that Spencer would have found a way in any event. We simply do
not know what would have happened if something else occurred, or hadn't.
Youmans was born in a New York State country village, and very early
discovered for himself that the world was full of curious and wonderful
things, just as most children do. He became a district school-teacher,
and so far as we know, was the very first man to publicly advocate
nature study as a distinctive means of child-growth. He taught his
children to observe; then he gave lectures on elementary botany; he
studied and he wrote, and he worked at the microscope.
And he became blind.
Did the closest observer on the continent cease work and grow
discouraged when sight failed? Not he.
He no more quit work than did Beethoven cease composing music when he no
longer was able to hear it.
We hear with the imagination, and we see with the soul. Youmans' sister,
Eliza Anne, became his guide and amanuensis; he saw the things through
her eyes and inspected the wonders with his finger-tips.
He became professor of Physics and Natural History at Yale, and when the
New England Lecture Lyceum was at its height, he rivaled Phillips,
Emerson and Beecher as a popular attraction. He made science a pleasure
to plain people, and started Starr King off on that tangent of putting
knowledge in fairylike and acceptable form. Youmans' lecture on "The
Chemistry of a Sunbeam" is one of the unforgettable things of a
generation past, so full of animation and rare, radiant spirit of
good-cheer was the man. He founded the "Popular Science Monthly," wrote
a dozen books on science, and several of these are now used in most of
the colleges and advanced schools of America and England.
The man had a head for business--he became rich.
It was about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six that Youmans was in
England on a business errand, introducing his books in the English
schools, that he first met Herbert Spencer, having been attracted to him
through a chance copy of "Social Statics" that his sister had read to
him. Youmans saw that Spencer was going right to the heart of things in
a way he himself could not. The men became friends, and of all Youmans'
wonderful discoveries, he considered Herbert Spencer the greatest.
"Sir Humphry Davy discovered, and possibly evolved, Michael Faraday; but
I didn't evolve Herbert Spencer, any more than Balboa evolved the
Pacific Ocean," said Youmans at a dinner given to Herbert Spencer when
he visited New York in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one. The name of Youmans
is not in the Hall of Fame as one of the world's great men, but as
naturalist, teacher, writer, lecturer and practical man of affairs, he
reflects credit on his Maker. The light went out of his eyes, but it
never went out of his soul.
* * * * *
In making payment to a publishing-house for sixty volumes of an American
historical work, Speaker Cannon recently made this endorsement on the
back of the check:
"This check is in full payment, both legal and moral, for sixty volumes
of books. The books are not worth a damn--and are dear at that. We are
never too old to learn, but the way your gentlemanly agent came it over
your Uncle Joseph, is worth the full amount."
When Speaker Cannon says the books are not worth a damn, he does not
necessarily state a fact about the books: he merely states a fact about
himself--that is, he gives his opinion. The value of the books is still
undetermined.
The Speaker's discontent with the books seems to have arisen from the
one fact that he had to pay for them.
This condition is a classic one, and the world long ago has conceded to
the man who pays, the privilege of protest. When Herbert Spencer issued
that world-famous prospectus, announcing his intention to publish ten
volumes setting forth his Synthetic Philosophy, it was one of the most
daring things ever done in the realm of thought. Spencer was forty, and
he was penniless and obscure. He had issued two books at his own
expense, and it had taken twelve years to dispose of seven hundred fifty
copies of one, and most of the edition of the other was still on hand.
Edward L. Youmans had such faith in Spencer that he sent out the
prospectus, and followed it up with letters and personal solicitations,
until seven thousand dollars was subscribed, and Herbert Spencer,
relieved from the uncertainties of finance, was free to think and write.
Among other subscribers secured by Youmans, was the Reverend Doctor
Jowett of Balliol. Spencer's books were issued in periodical parts.
After paying for three years, Jowett sent a check to the publishers for
the full amount of the subscription, saying, in an accompanying note:
"To save myself the bother of periodical payments for Mr. Spencer's
books, I herewith hand you check covering the full amount of my
subscription. I feel that I have already had full returns, for, while
the books are absolutely valueless, save as showing the industry of an
uneducated and indiscreet person, yet the experience that has come to me
in this transaction is not without its benefits."
This is the Oxford way of expressing the Illinois formula, "Your books
are not worth a damn--and are dear at that."
But the curious part of this transaction is that, after the death of
Doctor Jowett, his library was sold at auction, and his set of the
Synthetic Philosophy brought an advance of eight times its original
cost.
Truly my Lord Hamlet doth say:
Rashly,
And prais'd be rashness for it--let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do fail.
No one man's opinion concerning any book, or any man, is final. Speaker
Cannon is admired by one set of men and detested by others--all of equal
intelligence, although on this point the Speaker might possibly file an
exception.
Books are condemned offhand, or regarded as Bibles--it all depends upon
your point of view. Speaker Cannon may be right in his estimate of the
newly annexed sixty volumes of history that now grace his
library-shelves in Danville, proudly shown to constituents, or he may be
wrong; but anyway, Cannon's judgment about books is probably worth no
more than was the Reverend Doctor Jowett's. Gladstone spoke of Jowett as
that "saintly character"; and Disraeli called him "the bear of
Balliol--erratic, obtuse and perverse." But Jowett, Gladstone and
Disraeli all united in this: they had supreme contempt for the work of
Herbert Spencer; while the Honorable Joseph Cannon is neutral, but
inclined to be generous, having recently in a speech quoted from the
"Faerie Queene," which he declared was the best thing Herbert Spencer
had written, even if it was not fully up to date.
* * * * *
All during his life, Spencer was subject to attacks of indigestion and
insomnia. That these bad spells were "a disease of the imagination" made
them no less real. His isolation and lack of social ties gave him time
to feel his pulse and lie in wait for sleepless nights.
With the old ladies of his boarding-house, he was on friendly terms, and
his commonplace talk with them never gave them a guess concerning the
worldwide character of his work. Very seldom did he refer to what he was
doing and thinking--and then only among his most intimate friends.
Huxley was his nearest confidant; and a recent writer, who knew him
closely in a business way for many years, says that only with Huxley did
he throw off his reserve and enter the social lists with abandon.
No one could meet Spencer, even in the most casual way, without being
impressed with the fact that he was in the presence of a most superior
person. The man was tall and gaunt, self-contained--a little aloof--he
asked for nothing, and realized his own worth. He commanded respect
because he respected himself--there was neither abnegation, apology nor
abasement in his manner. Once I saw him walking in the Strand, and I
noticed that the pedestrians instinctively made way, although probably
not one out of a thousand had any idea who he was. No one ever affronted
him, nor spoke disrespectfully to his face; if unkind things were said
of the man and his work, it was in print and at a distance.
His standard of life was high--his sense of justice firm; with pretense
and hypocrisy he had little patience, while for the criminal he had a
profound pity.
Music was to him a relaxation and a rest. He knew the science of
composition, and was familiar in detail with the best work of the great
composers.
In order to preserve the quiet of his thoughts in the boarding-house, he
devised a pair of ear-muffs which fitted on his head with a spring.
If the conversation took a turn in which he had no interest, he would
excuse himself to his nearest neighbor and put on his ear-muffs. The
plan worked so well that he carried them with him wherever he went, and
occasionally at lectures or concerts, when he would grow more interested
in his thoughts than in the performance, he would adjust his patent.
So well pleased was he with his experiment that he had a dozen pairs of
the ear-muffs made one Christmas and gave them to friends, but it is
hardly probable they had the hardihood to carry them to a Four-o'Clock.
Seldom, indeed, is there a man who prizes his thoughts more than a
polite appearance.
In an address before the London Medical Society, in Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-one, Spencer said, "The man who does not believe in devils
during his life, will probably never be visited by devils on his
deathbed." Herbert Spencer died December Eighth, Nineteen Hundred
Three, in his eighty-fourth year. Up to within two days of his death,
his mind was clear, active and alert, and he worked at his books with
pleasure and animation--revising, correcting and amending. He never lost
the calm serenity of life. He sank gradually into sleep and passed
painlessly away. And thus was gracefully rounded out the greatest life
of its age--The Age of Herbert Spencer.
He left no request as to where he should be buried, but the thinking
people who recognized his genius considered Westminster Abbey the
fitting place--an honor to England's Valhalla. The Church of England
denied him a place there before it was asked, and the hallowed precincts
which shelter the remains of Queen Anne's cook and John Broughton the
pugilist are not for Herbert Spencer. His dust does not rest in
consecrated ground.
Herbert Spencer had no titles nor degrees--he belonged to no sect,
party, nor society. Practically, he had no recognition in England until
after he was sixty years of age. America first saw his star in the east,
and long before the first edition of "Social Statics" had been sold, we
waived the matter of copyright and were issuing the book here. On
receiving a volume of the pirated edition, the author paraphrased
Byron's famous mot, and grimly said, "Now, Barabbas was an American."
However, Spencer was really pleased to think that America should steal
his book; we wanted it--the English didn't. It took him twelve years to
dispose of the seven hundred fifty volumes, and most of these were given
away as inscribed copies. They lasted about as long as Walt Whitman's
first edition of "Leaves of Grass," although Whitman had the assistance
of the Attorney-General of Massachusetts in advertising his remarkable
volume.
Henry Thoreau's first book fared better, for when the house burned where
the remnant of four hundred copies lingered long, he wrote to a friend,
"Thank God, the edition is exhausted."
England recognized the worth of Thoreau and Whitman long before America
did; and so, perhaps, it was meet that we should do as much for Spencer,
Ruskin and Carlyle.
One of the most valuable of the many great thoughts evolved by Spencer
was on the "Art of Mentation," or brain-building. You can not afford to
fix your mind on devils or hell, or on any other form of fear, hate and
revenge. Of course, hell is for others, and the devils we believe in are
not for ourselves. But the thoughts of these things are registered in
the brain, and the hell we create for others, we ourselves eventually
fall into; and the devils we conjure forth, return and become our
inseparable companions. That is to say, all thought and all work--all
effort--are for the doer primarily, and as a man thinketh in his heart,
so is he. This sounds like the language of metaphysics, which Kant said
was the science of disordered moonshine. But Herbert Spencer's work was
all a matter of analytical demonstration. And while the word
"materialist" was everywhere applied to him, and he did not resent it,
yet he was one of the most spiritual of men. A meta-physician is one who
proves ten times as much as he believes; a scientist is one who believes
ten times as much as he can prove. Science speaks with lowered voice.
Before Spencer's time, German scientists had discovered that the cell
was the anatomical unit of life, but it was for Spencer to show that it
was also the psychologic or spiritual unit. New thoughts mean new
brain-cells, and every new experience or emotion is building and
strengthening a certain area of brain-tissue. We grow only through
exercise, and all expression is exercise. The faculties we use grow
strong, and those not used, atrophy and wither away. This is no less
true, said Spencer, in the material brain than in the material muscle. A
new thought causes a new structural enregistration. If it is the
repetition of thought, the cells holding that thought are exercised and
trained, and finally they act automatically, and repeated thought
becomes habit, and exercised habit becomes character--and character is
the man. It thus is plain that no man can afford to entertain the
thought of fear, hate and revenge--and their concomitants, devils and
hell--because he is enregistering these things physically in his being.
These physical cells, as science has shown, are transmitted to
offspring; and thus through continued mind-activity and consequent
brain-cell building, a race with fixed characteristics is evolved.
Pleasant memories and good thoughts must be exercised, and these in time
will replace evil memories, so that the cells containing negative
characteristics will atrophy and die. And when Herbert Spencer says that
the process of doing away with evil is not through punishment, threat or
injunction, but simply through a change of activities--thus allowing the
bad to die through disuse--he states a truth that is even now coloring
our whole fabric of pedagogics and penology. I couple these two words
advisedly, for fifty years ago, pedagogics was a form of penology--the
boarding-school with its mentors, scheme of fines, repressions and
disgrace! And now we have lifted penology into the realm of pedagogics.
I doubt me much whether the present penitentiary is a more unhappy place
than a boys' English boarding-school was in the time of Squeers.
All of our progress has come from replacing bad activities with the
good. Bad people we now believe are good folks who have misdirected
their energies; and we all believe a deal more in the goodness of the
bad than the badness of the good, with the result that "total depravity"
and "endless punishment" have been shamed out of every pulpit where
sane men preach. No devils danced on the footboard of Herbert Spencer's
bed, because there were no devil-cells in his brain.
Another great discovery of Herbert Spencer's was that the emotions
control the secretions. And the quality of the secretions determines the
chemical changes which constitute all cellular growth. Thus, cheerful,
happy emotions are similar to sunshine--they stand for health and
harmony, and as such, are constructive. Good-will is sanitary; kindness
is hygienic; friendship works for health. These happy emotions secrete a
quality in the blood called anabolism, which is essentially vitalizing
and life-producing.
On the other hand, fear, hate, and all forms of unkindness evolve a
toxin, katabolism, which tends to clog circulation, disturb digestion,
congest the secretions and stupefy the senses; and it tends to the
dissolution and destruction of life. All that saddens, embitters and
disappoints produces this chemical change that makes for death. "A
poison," said Spencer, "is only a concentrated form of hate."
* * * * *
Spencer's discoveries in electricity have been most valuable, and it was
by building on his suggestions and seeing with his prophetic eye that
the Crookes Tube, the Roentgen Ray, and the discovery of radium have
become possible.
The distinguishing feature of radium is its radioactivity, brought about
through its affinity for electricity. It absorbs electricity from the
atmosphere and gives it off spontaneously in the form of light and heat
without appreciable loss of form or substance. Every good thing in life
is dual, and through this natural and spontaneous marriage of radium and
electricity, we get very close to the secret of life. As the sun is the
giver of life and death, so by the use of the salts of radium have
scientists vitalized certain forms of cell-life into growth and
activity, and by the same token, and the use of the radium-ray, do they
destroy the germs of disease.
By his prophetic vision, Spencer saw years ago that we would yet be able
to eliminate and refine the substances of earth until we found the
element that would combine spontaneously with electricity, and radiate
life and heat. Among the very last letters dictated by Spencer, only a
few days before his death, was one to Madame Curie congratulating her on
her discovery of radium, and urging her not to relax in her further
efforts to seek out the secret of life. "My only regret is," wrote the
great man, "that I will not be here to rejoice with you in the fulness
of your success." Thus to the last did he preserve the eager, curious
and receptive heart of youth, and prove to the scientific world his
theory that brain-cells, properly exercised, are the last organs of the
body to lose their functions.