Herbert Spencer / by J. Arthur Thomson.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Herbert Spencer / by J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    HERBERT SPENCER CHAPTER I HEREDITY Ancestry—Grandparents—Uncles—Parents Remarkable parents often have commonplace children, and a genius may be born to a very ordinary couple, yet the importance of pedigree is so patent that our first question in regard to a great man almost invari- ably concerns his ancestry. In Herbert Spencer's case the question is rewarded. Ancestry.—From the information afforded by the Autobiography in regard to ancestry remoter than grandparents, we learn that, on both sides of the house, Spencer came of a stock characterised by the spirit of nonconformity, by a correlated respect for something higher than legislative enactments, and by a regard for remote issues rather than immediate results. In these respects Herbert Spencer was true to his stock—an uncompromising nonconformist, with a conscience loyal to principles having superhuman origins above rules having human origins, and with an eye ever directed to remote issues. Truly it required more than ingrained nonconformity, loyalty to principles, and far-sighted prudence to A X