MR HERBERT SPENCER'S WORK.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 94, 13 February 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR HERBERT SPENCER'S WORK.

The Times (November 11) says: —" Wo heartily congratulate Mr Herbert, .Spencer on having at length the treat work of his life—a system of synthetic philosophy. Tho third volume of ' Tho Principles of Sooiobgy,' published to day, brings the series to a close. It lias been a task of no common difficulty which Mr Herbert Speneev has accomplished. It has been nothing less than an attempt to exhibit iu detail tho unity of -11 knowledge, to show how the separate sciences ail come under the same general laws, and can be rightly understood only when they are l-egardcJ as forming the constituent parts of one harmonious whole. This has earned him necessarily over a very wide range of work. A volume of First Principles, two volumes of biology, two of psychology, three of sociology, and two of ethics make up the 10 volumes planned six-and-thirty years ago, continuously laboured upon since, and now at last finished. Mr Herbert Spencer, in his preface to the concluding volume, confesses himself surprised at his own. audacity in undertaking so vast a work, arid still more surprised at having completed it. He has done it under grave difficulties, and with frequent interruptions from chronic ill-health. But the mind has triumphed over the body. Mr Herbert Spencer has for many years, taken hisih rank as a systematic and philosophic thinker. It was in 1812 that he published his first work, and, many and multiform as have beeu his literary labours since, all that he has written has been consistent in every way with views which he then held and expressed. As a writer he has attained a reputation not only in his own country, and has exercised an influence not only on English thought. In Germany and in Russia he stands even higher than he does here, and has been more thoroughly studied in tho most abstruse and least popularly attractive parts of his books. To Englishmen he is best known as an ardent and uncompromising advocate of Individualism as opposed both to State Socialism and to what he considers an undue extension of the ordinary functions of government. Ho will be thought by many to have pressed his views too far, and to have sought to confine the functions of government within too narrow limits. But he has stopped far short of the extreme opinions of some of his professed followers. In tho present day, when Socialistic schemes are floating everywhere in the air, it is an excellent thing that the world should he compelled to see that there are two sides to the question, and that, in the judgment of one of our most eminent thinkers, Sociaiism in all its foms will do more mischief than it, so much tempts to cure. It is largely the of Socialism which clouds oyer IV (6rberfc Spencer's view of what the ..re is to bring. His confidence in ' .soeial progress of the race is not sh/ /. His doubt is whether any people? jo have suffered themselves to be f rflistically organised will be found wo; / to enter into the promised land." 'fy