Evolution : popular lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution : popular lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Happening to have in my possession early in the summer an ad- vance copy of your programme, it occurred to me that it might be to Mr. Spencer a comfort and a consolation, if not an aid to a renewal of strength, to learn what you were proposing to do; and I therefore sent him a copy of the programme, together with a let- ter of cordial sympathy; to which the letter just read is his reply. I subsequently learned, from Mr. W. E. Hughes of Birmingham, the President of the Sociological Section of one of them, that Mr. Spencer had caused the programme and my letter to be forwarded to societies in England and France engaged in the study and ad- vancement of Evolution Philosophy, as matter of interest to European Evolutionists. In listening with pleasure to the essay of the evening, I have found but one statement open to criticism. It seems to me we may believe the world has been blessed in that Mr. Spencer was not biased by a thorough academical education, but was left to the natural development of his intellectual powers untrammeled by direct and overmastering academic influences. His refusal to ac- cept the alleged privileges and opportunities of such an education while yet a mere boy, marks, to my mind, the early self-recogni- tion of those splendid natural powers by which the world has been already greatly benefited, and will continue to be benefited throughout the ages. I make only a passing allusion to this sub- ject, which it would be out of place to discuss here at length; but I may be permitted to say that the history of the development of the mind and philosophy of Herbert Spencer is most instructive and interesting; that the great advances in the thought and work of the world are almost never made by those of the “guild,” and that we should probably have marred rather than mended if we could have had it otherwise. The time allotted me permits mention of only two or three inci- dents in that history. Examination of the original English edi- tion of “Social Statics,” published in 1S50, discloses to us the action of a mind as yet dominated by its intellectual environ- ment; the facts presented, the line of thought pursued, and the method of treatment adopted, being such as many of his con- temporaries might naturally have employed in dealing with the subject. We find in that work little of the promise of the splendid fruitage we have already garnered from his subsequent works, except that derivable from the exhibition of transparent intellect- ual honesty and love of truth. Turning thence to the American edition of “Social Statics,” published by the Appletons in 1865, we find that Spencer consented with reluctance to its publication