Herbert Spencer.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7921, 29 September 1904, Page 6

Herbert Spencer.

Mr W; H. Hudson, in an article on the autobiography of Herbert Spencer, sounds a pathetic personal note as to the late philosopher, whose love story is suggested rather than told. It is a touching picture of a great man's inner desolation. "In most men (opines the late thinker) personal considerations conquer impersonal ones; in me the contrary happens." The world (writes Mr Hudson) which to most, of' us is a world of flesh and blood, to him was rather a world of abstract princn.-ies'. It was his greaii misfortune in boyhood as he recogQises to the full, to hive no brothers or ai3ters; and what in after life be needea before »1J; things was just that plexus of common human relationships interests, responsibilities, from which' for -one and another reason—his eirlv poverty and srruggles, his self-devo ion toi . a gigantic task, the: isolation which this entailed, ; his breakdown' in health—he was actually debarred.' It is at once pathetic and suggestive to find_him "longing" to have his " afreetions called "out"; hoping at thirty-five, "to begin to live some day;" and discovering, amid all" the ennui of invalidism. and old age, that his keenest pleasure was furnished by the society of two little girls, children of a friend who "lent them" to him at his request.