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Spencer (HERBERT an English philosopher)

HERBERT, an English philosopher; born in Derby, England, , England , April 27, 1820. His father was a schoolmaster in that town. At the age of 17 he entered on the profession of a railway engineer, in London; but about eight years afterward he gave up this profession, which lacked interest for him. He had already contributed various papers to the "Civil Engineers' and Architects' Journal"; and in the later half of 1842 he wrote a series of letters to the "Nonconformist" newspaper on "The Proper published in pamphlet form in 1843.

These letters imply a belief in human progress based on the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to its HERBERT SPENCER social surroundings, and maintain the tendency of these social arrangements "of themselves to assume a condition of stable equilibrium."

From 1848 to 1853 he was sub-editor of the "Economist" newspaper; and at this time he developed the ethical and political consequences of the ideas he had already enunciated, and sought an independent basis for them. Hence his first important work, "Social Statics" (1850; abridged and revised, 1892). It is thus noticeable that Spencer's philosophical activity began with ethical and social questions. The conception of the evolution of man and society as determined by circumstances, and the idea that organic and social evolutions are under the same law, preceded the elaboration of those scientific ideas which in the complete "System of Philosophy" are made to serve as their basis. It was gradually developed and applied by him in a series of articles contributed in the following years to reviews.

In these essays the doctrine of evolution began to take definite form, and to be applied to various departments of inquiry. The publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species," in 1859, gave a wide basis of scientific proof for what had hitherto been matter of speculation, and first showed the important part played by natural selection in the development of organisms.

As early as 1860 he had announced the issue of a "System of Synthetic Philosophy," already in course of preparation, which, beginning with the first principles of all knowledge, proposed to trace