Principles of western civilisation

IU THE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 8x

In the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer we have before us an immense effort, practically extending over the entire space of the last half of the nineteenth century, to construct a theory of human society from the avowed stand-point that all investigations in other fields of knowledge are merely preliminary to the definition of the principles underlying the process of our social development. But when the observer, who has in some measure caught sight of the significance of the position here defined, has slowly and patiently endeavoured to get to the heart of the Synthetic Philosophy, he will probably rise at last from the study of Mr. Spencer's writings with the feeling which has hitherto filled his mind deepened and intensified in every respect.

Mr. Spencer’s first important work, Soczal Statics, was published in 1851, some eight years before Darwin’s Origin of Species, and the development of his system of social philosophy extends over the succeeding half century. Despite the reverence due to the author for the great services he has rendered to knowledge in familiarising the general mind with the idea of development as applied to the world around us, and to the history of society in particular, no student of social philosophy who has once perceived the significance of the later developments of the Darwinian law of Natural Selection can let this fact now hide from him, after he has steeped his mind in Mr. Spencer’s writings, the bearing of one leading fact which will probably possess his mind concerning the Synthetic Philosophy. Mr. Spencer's work, as a conception of social progress, is, he will see, in all its essential features a presentation

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