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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SOU-STE |
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SPENCER, HERBERT (1820-1903) , English philosopher, was born at Derby on the 27th of April 182o. His father, William George Spencer
Methodists and Quakers. He declined an offer from his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer
Cambridge , and so was practically self-taught. During 18371846 he was employed as an engineer on the London & Birmingham railway; 18481853 as sub-editor of the Economist. From about this time to 1860 he contributed a large number of articles to the Westminster Review, which contain the first sketches of his philosophic doctrines. He also published two larger works, Social Statics in 1850, and Principles of Psychology in 1855. In 186o he sent out the syllabus of his Synthetic Philosophy in ten volumes, and in spite of frequent ill health had the satisfaction of completing it in 1896 with the third volume of the Principles of Sociology. He died on the 8th of December 1903.Herbert Spencer's significance in the history of English thought depends on his position as the philosopher of the great scientific movement
This estimate of Spencerian philosophy may be substantiated by a brief survey of its origin and leading characteristics. Spencer claims, with some reason, that he was always an evolutionist. But his notions of what " evolution " is developed quite gradually. At first he seems to have meant by the word only the belief that progress is real, and that the existing order of nature is the result of a gradual process and not of a " special creation." In Social Statics (1850) he still regards the process teleologically, and argues after the fashion of Paley that " the greatest happiness is the purpose of creation " (ch. iii. 1), and that to " gag the moral sentiment " is " to balk creative design " (ch. xxxii. 7). But this phraseology soon disappears, without his considering how, in default of some sort of teleology, it is legitimate to treat the world's history as a process. In The Development Hypothesis (1852) he objects strongly to the incredibility of the special creation of the myriad forms of life, without, however, suggesting how development has been effected. In Progress, its Law and Cause (1857) he adopted Von Baer's law, that the development of the individual proceeds from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. This is at once connected with the nebular hypothesis, and subsequently " deduced " from the ultimate law of the " persistence of force," and finally supplemented by a counter-process of dissolution, all of which appears to Spencer only as " the addition of Von Baer's law to a number of ideas that were in harmony with it." It is clear, however, that Spencer's ideas as to the nature of evolution were already pretty definite when Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) revolutionized the subject of organic evolutionby adding natural selection to the direct adaptation by use and disuse, and so suggesting an intelligible method of producing modifications in the forms of life. Spencer welcomed the Darwinian theory, and enriched it with the phrase " survival of the fittest "; but he did not give up the (Lamarckian) belief in the hereditary transmission of the modifications of organisms by the exercise of function. Shortly afterwards (1860) he sent out the prospectus of a systematic exposition of his Synthetic Philosophy, of which the first volume, First Principles, appeared in 1862. This work is divided into two parts; the first intended to show that while ultimate metaphysical questions are insoluble they compel to a recognition of an inscrutable Power behind phenomena which is called the Unknowable; the second devoted to the formulation and illustration
Such are the foundations of Spencer's metaphysic of the Unknowable, to which he resorts in all the fundamental difficulties which he subsequently encounters. Whatever its affinities with that version of " faith " which regards it as antagonistic to knowledge, it can hardly be deemed philosophically satisfactory. A failure to solve the problems of metaphysics must always remain a failure, in spite of all protestations that it was inevitable; and it in no wise justifies an advance to so self-contradictory an asylum ignorantiae as the Unknowable. In the edition of his First Principles, published in 19oo, Spencer adds a " postscript " which shows some consciousness of the contradiction involved in his knowledge of the Unknowable, and finally contends that his account of the Knowable in part ii. will stand even if part i. be rejected. Even this, however, understates the case, seeing that a really inscrutable Unknowable would destroy all confidence in the order of nature and render all knowledge entirely precarious
In part ii. Spencer recognizes successively likenesses and unlikenesses among phenomena (the effects of the Unknowable), which are segregated into manifestations, vivid (object, non-ego) or faint (subject, ego), and then into space and time, matter and motion and force, of which the last is symbolized for us by the experience of resistance, and is that out of which our ideas of matter and motion are built. Hence the Persistence of Force is the ultimate basis of knowledge. From it Spencer proceeds to deduce the indestructibility of matter and energy, the equivalence and transformation of forces, the necessity of a rhythm, of Evolution (i.e. integration of matter with concomitant dissipation of motion) and Dissolution, and finally reaches the statement of the Law of Evolution as " an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." This process of evolution is due to " the instability of the homogeneous," the " multiplication of effects " and their " segregation," continuing until it ceases in complete "equilibration." Sooner or later, however, the reverse process of Dissolution, with its absorption of motion and disintegration of matter, which indeed has always been going on to some extent, must prevail, and these oscillations of the cosmic process will continue with-out end. It appears, therefore, that Spencer ultimately describes the Knowable in terms of the mechanical conceptions of matter and motion, and that this must give a materialistic colouring to his philosophy. There are, however, other flaws also in his procedure. The presence of Force, i.e. his version of the methodological assumption of constancy in the quantitative aspects of phenomena, seems a very unsuitable basis for a philosophy of progress. To such a philosophy a consideration of the conditions, if any, under which progress can be conceived as ultimately real, seems a necessary preliminary, which Spencer omits. He also assumes that " Evolution " is a real, nay, an ultimate law of nature, but his evidence only goes to show that it is a result, in some cases, of the complex interaction of laws, which, like Rhythm, Segregation, &c., are in their turn only tendencies, and may be, and often are, counteracted. By the afterthought of a " dissolution " process (2nd ed. of First Principles) Spencer in a way admits this, but introduces fresh difficulties as to its relation to " Evolution." If the two processes go on together both are tendencies, and whether there is on the whole progress or not will depend on their relative strength; neither can be universal, nor the " law " of cosmic existence, unless its coexisting rival is regarded as essentially secondary. But if so it ceases to be available as evidence of a coming reversal of the dominant process. If, on the other hand, the processes are strictly alternative, a world which ex hypothesi exemplifies the one can never justify us in inferring the other. Spencer appeals alternately to the " instability of the homogeneous " and the impossibility of complete equilibration to keep up the cosmic see-saw, but he can do so only by confining himself to a part of the universe. A world wholly homogeneous or equilibrated could no longer change, while so long as a part only is in process, the process cannot be represented as universal. Again, an infinite world cannot be wholly engaged either in evolution or in dissolution, so that it is really unmeaning to discuss the universality of the cosmic process until it is settled that we have a universe at all, capable of being considered as a whole. In the last resort, therefore, Spencer fails to deduce philosophically not only the necessity of progress, but also its compatibility with the evolution-dissolution oscillation, and even the general possibility of conceiving the world as a process. In other words, in spite of his intentions he does not succeed in giving a metaphysic of evolutionism. In the Principles of Biology the most notable points are the definition of life as the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations, and the consequent emphasis on the need of adapting the organism to its environment. This exaggerates the passivity of life, and does not sufficiently recognize that the higher organisms largely adjust external to internal relations and adapt their environment to their needs. His universal process of Evolution seems to give Spencer a criterion of " higher " and " lower " " progression " and "degeneration," independent of the accidents of actual history, and unattainable by strictly Darwinian methods. The higher (at least in times of " evolution ") is the more complex and differentiated, whether it invariably survives or not. On the other hand, he advances too easily from the maxim that function is prior to, and makes, structure to the conclusion that the results of use and disuse are therefore immediately incarnated in structural adaptations capable of hereditary transmission. This inference has involved him in much controversy with the ultra-Darwinians of Weismann's school, who deny the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics altogether. And though Spencer's general positionthat it is absurd to suppose that organisms after being modified by their life should give birth to offspring showing no traces of such modificationsseems the more philosophic, yet it does not dispose of the facts which go to show that most of the evidence for the direct transmission of adaptationsis illusory, and that beings are organised to minimize the effects of life on the reproductive tissues, so that the transmission of the effects of use and disuse, if it occurs, must be both difficult and rarefar more so than is convenient for Spencer's psychology. In his Principles of Psychology Spencer advocates the genetic explanation of the phenomena of the adult human mind by reference to its infant and animal ancestry. On the fundamental question, however, of the psychophysical connexion and the derivation of mind from matter, his utterances are neither clear nor consistent. On the one hand, his whole formulation of Evolution in mechanical terms urges him in the direction of materialism, and he attempts to compose the mind out of homogeneous units of consciousness (or " feeling ") " similar in nature to those which we know as nervous shocks; each of which is the correlative of a rhythmical motion of a material unit or group of such units " ( 62). On the other hand, when pressed by his disciple, Fiske (Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy ii. p. 444), he is ready to amend nervous into psychical shocks, which is no doubt what he ought to have meant but could not say without ruining the illusory bridge between the psychical and the physiological which is suggested in the phrase nervous shock." And he admits ( 63) that if we were compelled to choose between translating mental phenomena into physical and its converse, the latter would be preferable, seeing that the ideas of matter and motion, merely symbolic of unknowable realities, are complex states of consciousness built out of units of feeling. But easiest of all is it to leave the relation of the unknowable " substance of Mind " to the unknowable " substance of Matter " (substance he throughout conceives as the unknowable substrate of phenomena) to the Unknowable, as he finally does. To the theory of knowledge Spencer con-tributes a " transfigured realism," to mediate between realism and idealism, and the doctrine that " necessary truths," acquired in experience and congenitally transmitted, are a priori to the individual, though a posteriori to the race, to mediate between empiricism and apriorism. It has already been explained, however, that the biological foundations of the latter doctrine are questionable.In the Principles of Sociology Spencer's most influential ideas have been that of the social organism, of the origination of religion out of the worship of ancestral ghosts, of the natural antagonism between nutrition and reproduction, industrialism and warfare. Politically, Spencer is an individualist of an extreme laissez faire type, and it is in his political attitude that the consequences of his pre-Darwinian conception of Evolution are most manifest. But for this he would hardly have established so absolute an antithesis between industrial and military competition, and have shown himself readier to recognize that the law of the struggle for existence, just because it is universal and equally (though differently) operative in every form of society, cannot be appealed to for guidance in deciding between the respective merits of an industrial or military and of an individualist or socialist organization of society.In the Principles of Ethics Spencer, though relying mainly on the objective order of nature and the intrinsic consequences of actions for the guidance of conduct, conceives the ethical end in a manner intermediate between the hedonist and the evolutionist. The transition from the evolutionist criterion of survivalwhich in itself it is difficult to regard as anything but non-moralto the criterion of happiness is effected by means of the psychological argument that pleasure promotes function and that living beings must, upon pain of extinction, sooner or later take pleasure in actions which are conducive to their survival. Hence pleasure is, on the whole, good, and asceticism reprehensible, although in man's case there has arisen (owing to the rapidity of evolution) a certain derangement and divergence between the pleasant and the salutary ( 39). Nevertheless pleasure forms an " inexpugnable element " of the moral aim ( 16). Conduct being the adjustment of acts to ends, and good conduct that which is conducive to the preservation of a pleasurable. life in a society so adjusted that each attains his happiness without impeding that of others, life can be considered valuable only if it conduces to happiness. On the other hand, life must in the long run so conduce, whatever its present value may appear to be, because a constant process of adjustment is going on which is bound sooner or later to lead to a complete adjustment which will be perfect happiness. This is the refutation of pessimism, which ultimately agrees with optimism in making pleasure the standard of value. In this reasoning Spencer appears to have overlooked the possibility of an expansion of the ethical environment. If this is as rapid as (or more rapid than) the rate of adaptation, there will be no actual growth of adaptation and so no moral progress. Complete adaptation to an infinitely receding ideal is impossible, and relative adaptation depends on the distance between the actual and the ideal. Spencer, however, considers that he can not only anticipate such a state of complete adjustment, but even lay down the rules obtaining in it, which will constitute the code of `.` Absolute Ethics " and the standard for discerning the " least wrong " actions of relative ethics. He conceives it as a state of social harmony so complete that in it even the antagonism between altruism and egoism will have been over-come. Both of these are original
After completing his system (1896) Spencer continued to revise it, and brought out new editions of the Biology (18981899) and First Principles (1900). The dates of his chief
in 2 vols. appeared posthumously in 1904. For a full bibliography of his works see W. H. Hudson's Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (up to 1895) ; and for a useful summary of his chief
In hiswill he appointed trustees, who were to entrust the supervision to Mr. H. R. Tedder, librarian of the Athenaeum Club; and the work was resumed accordingly after his death, five more parts being arranged for, one of which was published in 1910. (F. C. S. S.) End of Article: SPENCER, HERBERT (1820-1903) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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