The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-12-08

The newspapers all publish long ap-
precautions and anecdotes of Mr.. Spen-
Ger, whom they universally describe as
"the last of the great thinkers of the
Victorian age"
Frederick A. Ober, in writing OF the
aged philosopher. two years ago said:
Nearly all his great contemporaries
have passed away-Darwin, Huxley,
Tyndall, Lyel Perhaps the only sur
vivOr who has been mentioned in the
same class with him and who still sur
wives is Alfred Russell Wallace, who SO
generously stepped aside when Darwin
was about to publish his great work on
Natural Selection" and allowed him
to reap honors to which he himself
was in part entitled. In truth, this trio
of thinkers-Darwin, Spencer and Wal
lace-were working toward the same
conclusions in regard to the theory of
evolution, but on different lines. Wal
lace, naturalist who had passed many
years in field and forest: Darwin, who
devoted his life and fortune to the
working out of the problem at homa,
and Spencer, solitary thinker and re-
cluse, had all arrived at the same or
similar conclusion. But Darwin be-
came the popularizer of the theory.
1t may be news to some that the
term survival of the fittest" is not
Darwin's, but Spencer's; also the we'll
worn adaptation to the environment"
so often used in years gone by. Spencer
himself is a case of the fitteSt survival
of thinker among thinkers, but he is
not one who has adapted himself to
his environment so much as one who
created an environment and brought
his readers into it.
Herbert Spencer, who for nearly 40
years labored almost increasingly upon
his great work, Synthetic Philosophy"
and who may be termed the father of
evolutionists, was born April 81, 1920.
He is one of the most conspicuous ex-
amples of the self educated man, or,
rather, of one who never received
college education, never having been
within university walls as student or
teacher. Further than this, he has
persistently declined all academical
distinctions, and where they have been
conferred by institutions which sought
in this manner to obtain a reflex Ius-
ter by "honoring' him he has ignored
them. Like Gladstone, also, he has
escaped the belittling influence of
title and today is merely Herbert Spen-
Ger, thinker and profound scholar, dig
nified solely by the merit of his unex
ampled achievements.
Spencer and Carlyle were alike in
their disregard of popularity, their
disgust at notoriety, their shrinking
from publicity 1t is related of Carlyle
that when one day a certain lecturer
went to see him he poked his head out
of his doorway and asked, ''Who are
your" The answer was, Il am So-and-
so, and I have been giving lectures on
you have, have you? Well, confound
your impudencel Good morning. So
Spencer, when he was informed that a
certain biographer claimed that he had
read and approved a monograph on
himself wrote to the press, 81 have not
seen and have declined to see a single
page of Mr.. IS work in proof, in
manuscript or in any other shape"
Neither of these great men cared what
the world said about them; they were
too much absorbed in the preparation
and deliverance of their messages to
the world. That each had a message
which the world needed and could
profit from by listening to has been
long since admitted. Without being
popular in any sense of the word, Spen-
| Ger has patiently wrought on his
magnum opus through more years than
are contained in an average lifetime,
and in his old age knows thai he has
compelled the world to listen to his die
| tum and to rank him above the average
thinker of his time.
Nor are Spencer's books more popular
than the man, as a glance, for instance,
at his famous definition of evolution
NAV suggest: "A change from an in
definite. incoherent honogeneity to a
definite. coherent heterogeneity, accom-
panying the dissipation of motion and
| indignation of matter Cor through con-
tinuOuS characterization anu 1HteSTd-
tio4l)." And yet that definition stands.
and the series of books comprised in the
| ten great volumes of his Synthetic
Philosophy" form one of the mightiest
monuments that ever pure intellect has
raised This is written without any ref
erence to Mr.. Spencer's conclusions or
| differences, which have borne heavily
upon various ''ologies' and ISM" for
in his deductions he has hewn to the
line. has presented things as he saw
them. 1t is of Spencer as the intellect
ual giant as the cosmic philosopher,
that the world must judge him; not as
the posftivist the free thinker or the
agnostic He sought to grasp the whole
world of science and philosophy. to pre-
/ sent a cosrnic scheme of the universe,
| IonRed beyond the ordinary sran e1 hn-