Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer.

Herbert Spencer for the use of the knowledge given to the world in his First Principles.

Spencer) even the most impatient reformers now recognise the fact that a State is an organism and not an artificial structure to be pulled to pieces and put together on a new model whenever it pleases the effective majority to do so.

fine and subtle distinctions, such as the speculative differences which divide the absolute individualism of Herbert Spencer on the one hand, from the practical or utilitarian individualism of J.

Such easy-going confidence on the part of ordinary Englishmen in the infinitely small effect of legislation, whether good or bad, may be pardoned when we reflect that a systematic thinker such as Herbert Spencer, in many of his strictures on the failure of legislation to achieve its avowed object, makes far too little allowance for the long latent period which often elapses before results appear.

The true ground of Herbert Spencer’s attack on utilitarianism is that the utilitarians, in the pursuit of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, often sacrificed the freedom of individuals to the real or supposed benefit of the State, i.

Hardly had he published his view when the scholars of society set themselves to criticise it, foremost among them the philosopher Spencer and Sir John Lubbock, the celebrated scholar of society — and the first of these especially, for he poured himself out in criticism of this doctrine in his book «The Principles of Social Order» and his book «The Principles of Civilisation» and others, with which we have no concern.

for the spread of this doctrine in the middle of that century brought the men of letters of the Franks to refer everything back to natural causes, as Spencer did in referring the forms of worship and most of the usages to causes of this kind.

for many of the philosophers of civilisation (*al-ʻumrān*) deny it, and more than one of them has written in criticism of it — above all Spencer, the celebrated philosopher, who is the most trustworthy of authorities in the science of human society.

In harmony with this theory, the various societies of mankind, in their relation to belief in a spirit world, have been thus classed by Mr.

Herbert Spencer cited the prevalence of short-sightedness among the "notoriously studious" Germans as a defect due to the inheritance of an acquired character.

But the popular mind frequently lags a generation behind, in its grasp of the work of science, and it must be said that in this case the popular mind is still largely under the influence of Herbert Spencer and his school.

Herbert Spencer went so far as to say, "Close contemplation of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with two alternatives--either that there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no evolution.