Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/735

 SPENCER, THE MAN 7 1 1

unfalteringly for peace, and he persistently exalted industrialism over a military regime. There was never a doubt as to his position on questions of public policy.

Spencer never had a wide circle of personal friends. His enforced retirement made general social intercourse impossible. His tender regard for his mother found expression to the end of her life; Lewes and George Eliot counted him a delightful companion; with Huxley he maintained a lifelong relation of friendliness and mutual esteem ; to Dr. Yournans his American apostle Spencer wrote many letters of affectionate regard and, in time of illness, of solicitude and good cheer. With a small circle Spencer was on terms of intimacy. His frail health made him sparing of his energy, which was easily over- taxed by social intercourse. He would frequently lie down in the company of his friends, and a stranger was often disconcerted when Spencer covered his ears with a pair of black velvet muffs which he had invented to protect himself from too much chatter. Spencer seemed a little distant and formal with strangers, but was kindly and humorous with his friends. The assertion that he "talked like a book" is warmly denied by those who knew him intimately. They affirm that he was modest, considerate, and not at all prone either to carry things with a high hand or to assume a didactic manner. Spencer was fond of "fives" which he played now and then with Huxley and of billiards, to which at one time he devoted himself with much ardor. Through the eyes of rather secretive friends we get a glimpse of a sympathetic, humorous, alert, and quite human gentleman behind the synthetic philosopher.

But above mental, ethical, and social traits rises the idealism of the man. His body weakened by undue application to his tasks, his work- ing day often cut down by illness to less than half an hour, his means of support precarious and scanty, his books selling slowly copy by copy, his followers pitifully few, Spencer worked on for more than a third of a century. Others have endured for wealth and fame, but here was a man who had marked out for himself an ideal task, an intellectual labor. He aimed at nothing less than the unifying of all knowledge, and toward this end through sickness and poverty he fought his way. What though his work disintegrate with time? The story of his ideal and his struggle will endure, an epic of the human mind. GEORGE E. VINCENT.