Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 09.djvu/35

LEFT SPELLING BEFOBM 17 SPENCER, HERBERT ments prepared in the executive depart- ments. In spite of his personal popularity, President Roosevelt was com- pelled, shortly afterward, to rescind this order, so strong and persistent was the popular protest against the innovation. In Great Britain and her colonies there has also been a movement for simplified spelling. In 1911 an official conference of all the educational departments of the Empire met in London, the delegates to which were appointed by their respective governments. This conference passed a resolution declaring simplified spell- ing "a matter of urgent importance." After this authoritative declaration, Nova Scotia, Australia and New Zealand instituted first steps in spelling reform in their departments of education. SPELT, in botany, an inferior kind of wheat, Triticum spleta; called also Ger- man wheat. It has a stout, almost solid straw, with strong spikes of grain. It is more hardy than common wheat, and grows in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, in the south of France, and in elevated situations in Switzerland where common wheat would not ripen. SPELTER, a commercial name for zinc; also a technical abbreviation of spelter-solder, an impure zinc of a yel- lowish color used in soldering brass joints. It is known _ in Germany _ as gelbliches englischer zinte, and possibly owes its color to the presence of a small amount of copper. The word is also applied to an alloy sometimes used in the composition of bell metal. See ZiNC. SPENCER, a town in Worcester co., Mass.; on the Boston and Albany rail- road; 11 miles S. W. of Worcester. It contains the Richard Sugden Public Li- brary, the David Prouty High School, a National bank, street railroad and electric light plants, and a number of weekly newspapers. It has manufac- tories of wire, boots, brass goods, shoes, and woolen goods. Pop. (1910) 6,740; (1920) 5,930. SPENCER, HERBERT, an English philosopher; born in Derby, England, April 27, 1820. His father was a schoolmaster in that town. At the age of 17 he entered on the pro- fession of a railway engineer, in Lon- don; but about eight years after- ward he gave up this profession, which lacked interest for him. He had al- ready contributed various papers to the "Civil Engineers' and Architects' Jour- nal"; and in the later half of 1842 he wrote a series of letters to the "Non- conformist" newspaper on "The Proper Sphere of Government," which were re- published in pamphlet form in 1843. These letters imply a belief in human progress based on the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to its HERBERT SPENCER social surroundings, and maintain the tendency of these social arrangements "of themselves to assume a condition of stable equilibrium." From 1848 to 1853 he was sub-editor of the "Economist" newspaper; and at this time he developed the ethical and political consequences of the ideas he had already enunciated, and sought an independent basis for them. Hence his first important work, "Social Statics" (1850; abridged and revised, 1892). It is thus noticeable that Spencer's philo- sophical activity began with ethical and social questions. The conception of the evolution of man and society as deter- mined by circumstances, and the idea that organic and social evolutions are under the same law, preceded the elab- oration of those scientific ideas which in the complete "System of Philosophy" are made to serve as their basis. It was gradually developed and applied by him in a series of articles contributed in the following years to reviews. ^ In these essays the doctrine of evolu- tion began to take definite form, and to be applied to various departments of in- quiry. The publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species," in 1859, gave a wide basis of scientific proof for what had hitherto been matter of speculation, and first showed the important part played by natural selection in the development of organisms. As early as 1860 he had announced the issue of a "System of Synthetic Philos- ophy," already in course of preparation, which, beginning with the first princi- ples of all knowledge, proposed to trace