Page:The Herbert Spencer lecture.djvu/13

 and have commanded at home and abroad the most penetrating power. This judgement rests on the fact of the very rare band of those who can be called philosophers, and of the infinite difficulty of the task of constructing anything that can be treated as a Synthesis of human knowledge. In a world saturated with departmental research and with specialist learning, the effect of a synthetic co-ordination of ideas forces the attention and stirs the imagination of all serious students, whether they accept or reject the special conclusions of the system.

In any case, all can do justice to a noble life of devotion to social duty and a grand ideal. The story of Spencer's life has been one of almost unexampled absorption in the vast task to which he dedicated himself from youth. The record of British philosophy can hardly furnish an instance of perseverance in labour so continuous, so protracted, so beset with difficulties and obstacles of all kinds—scanty means, desultory training, oppressive neglect, bodily suffering—in a career wherein profit, honour, and success were hardly to be expected, or came so late as to be little valued. For more than forty years he laboured to build up his encyclopaedic system step by step, without for an hour swerving from his aim, or sacrificing one of his rigid rules of life. Personal tastes could not draw him, nor could obstacles deter him, from his goal. Enjoying the society of cultivated men and women, as he did, and forced to accept involuntary leisure from the state of his health, he yet habitually shunned every social distraction. No prospect of gain, no hope of rest, no fear of destitution, no prostration by disease, ever tempted him, or ever drove him from his allotted task. No man ever