Social statics, or, the conditions essential to human happiness specified, and the first of them developed / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social statics, or, the conditions essential to human happiness specified, and the first of them developed / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    heat of a gardening fit ? The sight is an amusing, and not uninstructive one. Probably a slice of a border—some couple of square yards or so—has been made over to him for his exclusive use. No small accession of dignity, and not a little pride of proprietorship, does he exhibit. So long as the enthusiasm lasts, he never tires of contemplating his territory; and every companion and every visitor with whom the liberty can be taken, is pretty sure to be met with the request—“ Come and see my garden.” Note chiefly, how- ever, with Avhat anxiety the growth of a few scrubby plants is regarded. Three or four times a day will the little urchin rush out to look at them. How provokingly slow their progress seems to him. Each morning on getting up he hopes to find some marked change; and lo, every thing appears just as it did the day before. When will the blossoms come out ? For nearly a week has some forward bud been promising him the triumph of a first flower, and still it remains closed. Surely there must be something wrong ! Perhaps the leaves have stuck fast. Ah! that is the reason, no doubt. And so ten to one you shall some day catch our young florist very busily engaged in pulling open the calyx, and, it may be, trying to unfold a few of the petals. Somewhat like this childish impatience is the feeling exhibited by not a few state-educationists. Both they and their type show a lack of faith in natural forces— almost an ignorance that there are such forces. In both there is the same dissatisfaction with the ordained rate of progress. And by both, artificial means are used to remedy what are conceived to be nature’s failures. With- in these few years men have all at once been awakened to the importance of instructing the people. That to which they were awhile since indifferent or even hostile has sud- denly become an object of enthusiasm. With all the ardour of recent converts—with all a novice’s inordinate