Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/757

 REVIEWS 741

The Principles of Sociology. Vol. III. By HERBERT SPENCER. D. Appleton&Co. Pp. x+64$. $2.

MR. HERBERT SPENCER has been a much mixed blessing. He is the most miscellaneous paradox in the history of thought. The species "speculative positivist" doubtless culminates in him. The most con- tradictory metaphysics of this century will be found in his impeachments of metaphysics. His science is philosophy, and his philosophy is mostly overdrafts on unauthorized assumption. He has probably done more than any man of recent times to set a fashion of semi-learned thought, but he has lived to hear himself pronounced an anachronism by men who were once his disciples. It is impossible to understand the terms of today's philosophical and ethical problems without knowing Spencer. At the same time, the suspicion is afoot among the very men whom Spencer taught that the Synthetic Philosophy is a rope of sand.

Without presuming to pass specifically upon the Spencerian biology and psychology, I may speak with some confidence of the ethics and the sociology figs from the same thistle. Mr. Spencer has pathetic- ally confessed that the sap did not run in the root as he expected (Ethics, Vol. II, preface). His effort to establish a positive basis for morals was gallant. Its incidental results entitle Mr. Spencer to lasting remembrance and gratitude. The impulse that he gave to further endeavor in the same direction will not soon lose its force. Neverthe- less Mr. Spencer's material contribution to a positive basis of ethics is a minus quantity. His " data of ethics" are no data at all. They are important considerations upon the methodology of ethical inquiry. They are notable reflections upon what to do with data after they are found. His own method, however, is neither proper induction nor legitimate deduction, but presumption fortified by illustration a method more seductive than the cocaine habit after its fascinations have once been tried. Mr. Spencer fondly imagines that his "law of equal freedom" is a premise from which the various human "rights" may be deduced the right of property, of exchange, of free belief, of free speech, etc. In point of fact, if the "rights" and prevalent belief in tin in did not exist, the " law of equal freedom " would no more reveal them than the law of gravitation reveals things that are subject to it in unknown planets. The " law of equal freedom" amounts simply to the formal principle that, whenever a human right is discovered, one man has the same natural title to its benefits as another. Spencer is one of the goodly fellowship of the apostles of humanity who have her-