Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/133

Rh of social duty throughout the community, and, above all, a livelier sense of parental responsibility. Let us have these things, and the republic will be safe, and education will begin to be truly humanizing and truly progressive.

is now a pretty decided agreement among the intelligent and unprejudiced that Herbert Spencer takes rank as the first philosopher of England, and G. H. Lewes many years ago declared him to be the only English thinker who has originated a philosophy. How much this may mean is well intimated by the remark of Mr. Lester F. Ward, that, "when we have reached England's greatest in any achievement of mind, we have usually also reached the world's greatest."

But there is still room to regard the compliment as equivocal, for the question remains, What is it to be "the first philosopher"? To be first and alone in a department of thought obviously means little or much, according to the grade of intellectual work involved. Philosophy is a vague term, and, as experience shows, may imply the lowest as well as the highest exercise of the mind. As applied to systems of speculation in pre-scientific ages, it no doubt represented the best mental effort then possible. But as applied in these times to similar speculations, with little reference to the rise of modern knowledge, it is not the highest kind of intellectual performance. True philosophy the deepest and largest understanding of things must be so far scientific in spirit and method as to place facts first, and work in subordination to them. The philosophy that is typified by the Concord school, which is most interested in the transcendental, which gives imagination the lead, leaves vulgar facts to the Gradgrinds, and is as jealous of science as theology, is not a very exalted form of mental exertion, and to be first in it is no great compliment. Philosophy, to achieve its highest objects, must now begin with the patient study of long-contemned realities; must discipline the imagination, must work in subordination to established knowledge, and aim to bring out profounder truth for the practical guidance of man in ordering the course of his life.

To be the first philosopher of the foremost nation of the world from this point of view is exalted praise, and this is the position that Mr. Spencer has undoubtedly won. His philosophy is based upon Nature, is limited to Nature, is subordinated to science, and is such a presentation of the laws and order of the world as bears immediately upon questions of human conduct. It is synthesis of the principles which become all-determining rules in the practical sphere of human action. It bears upon religion, upon politics, upon education, and upon social and domestic experience, with the authority of science and the full power of a verified system of natural laws. It was long a reproach to Spencer that he undertook to deal with so many subjects, but it is now perceived that this was but the inevitable consequence of that comprehensive method which the advance of modern knowledge had made possible and imperative.

We have been led to these remarks by a circumstance, not in itself of much importance, but which is yet significant as giving a new attestation of the worth of Spencer's philosophy in its practical bearings. Mr. Spencer has applied his philosophical views to the subject of education, and his little treatise upon the subject has been rendered into all the languages of the civilized world. And now, by an appeal made to the judgment of English teachers, the verdict has been rendered that the first of English philosophers is also the first of English educators. We see, by the London "Journal of Education," that an extra prize was offered for the best list