Page:The Herbert Spencer lecture.djvu/16

 sciences in the time of either Bacon, how hopeless a dream it was for either to presume to organize general science. Utterly unlike Francis Bacon as was Spencer, in character, in life, and in brain, even the antithesis of Francis Bacon in many things, the critics both at home and abroad have constantly compared them and contrasted them, by reason of the encyclopaedic nature of their studies and the synthetic power of their genius. And for this there is a certain warrant in fact. That of which Francis Bacon dreamed with his luminous imagination Spencer planned out with a far sounder scientific basis and a less Utopian ambition. Spencer thereby remains our one synthetic philosopher. Whether that Synthesis has yet been, or is ever destined to be, accepted as adequate is a problem which we may presently consider. But its rare power to rivet the attention of the thinking world, and to plant the seeds of an infinite crop of fertile conceptions, can hardly be gainsaid by any serious student of the evolution of modern thought.

Whether one can rest satisfied with such a symmetrical solution of the mysteries of the Universe, whether any Synthesis of the Universe as a whole be a practicable problem, to be solved as yet, or indeed at any future time, we can all do justice to the magnificent vision of a coherent Synthesis, a system combining physical and sociologic knowledge in one scheme. And we all bow down to the heroic courage with which Herbert Spencer put aside pleasures and rewards in the long strain after his supreme idea. The literary and scientific world in Europe, in America, and in the Far East does homage to this devotion to the ideal of a Synthetic Philosophy. To many it comes like the dawn of a new era, in an age absorbed in the infinite analyses of fissiparous specialism.