Table Of Content“A stunning revelation of a personality and thinker whom even most well informed Herbert Mark Francis
Victorianists evaluate largely from misinformation. Th is book presents an entirely new
Spencer
understanding of Spencer. Scholars from a number of fi elds – philosophy, literature,
history, and history of science – will quite simply never be able to think of Spencer and the
as they have before. Wonderfully and persuasively revisionist, backed up by superb Invention of
research, this will be the book on Spencer for the present and next generation.”
Modern Life
frank m. turner, John Hay Whitney Professor of History, Yale University
“A major new study of Herbert Spencer, revealing aspects of his personality and thought
previously little explored. It is an impressive work of scholarship and interpretation
that no scholar of nineteenth-century thought can aff ord to neglect.” Mark Francis
david boucher, Professor of Political Th eory, Cardiff University
The ideas of the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) profoundly shaped
Victorian thought regarding evolutionary theory, the philosophy of science, sociology
and politics. In his day, Spencer’s works ranked alongside those of Darwin and Marx in
their importance to the development of disciplines as wide-ranging as sociology,
anthropology, political theory, philosophy and psychology. Yet during his lifetime – and
certainly in the decades that followed – Spencer has been widely misunderstood. Both
lauded and disparaged as the father of Social Darwinism (it was Spencer who coined the
phrase “survival of the fittest”), and as an apologist for individualism and unrestrained
capitalism, he was, in fact, none of these; he was instead a subtle and complex thinker.
In his major new intellectual biography of Spencer, Mark Francis uses archival
material and contemporary printed sources to create a fascinating portrait of a man who
attempted to explain modern life in all its biological, psychological, and sociological
forms through a unique philosophical and scientific system that bridged the gap between
empiricism and metaphysics. Vastly influential in England and beyond – particularly the
United States and Asia – his philosophy was, as Francis shows, systematic and rigorous.
Despite the success he found in the realm of ideas, Spencer was an unhappy man. Francis
reveals how Spencer felt permanently crippled by the Christian values he had absorbed
Herbert
during childhood, and was incapable of romantic love, as became clear during his
relationship with the novelist George Eliot.
Elegantly written, provocative, and rich in insight, Herbert Spencer and the Invention
of Modern Life is an exceptional work of scholarship that not only dispels the
Spencer
misinformation surrounding Spencer but also illuminates the broader cultural and
intellectual history of the nineteenth century.
and the Invention
www.routledge.com
of Modern Life
Jacket illustration: Herbert Spencer by John
Bagnold Burgess, 1872 (courtesy of the
National Portrait Gallery, London).
Herbert Spencer
and the Invention of Modern Life
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Herbert Spencer
and the Invention of Modern Life
Mark Francis
First published in by Acumen
Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
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© Mark Francis,
Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
N o reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of
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To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor
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ISBN: ---- (hardcover)
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Designed and typeset in Classical Garamond
by Kate Williams, Swansea.
Contents
Preface vii
Chronology x
List of illustrations xiii
Introduction 1
I An individual and his personal culture
1 A portrait of a private man 17
2 Th e longing for passion 34
3 Th e problem with women 51
4 Spencer’s feminist politics 69
5 Culture and beauty 78
6 Eccentricities: health and the perils of recreation 91
II Th e lost world of Spencer’s metaphysics
7 Th e New Reformation 111
8 Intellectuals in the Strand 132
9 Th e genesis of a system 144
10 Common sense in the mid-nineteenth century 157
11 From philosophy to psychology 171
III Spencer’s biological writings and his philosophy of science
12 On goodness, perfection and the shape of living things 189
13 Th e meaning of life 211
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herbert spencer
14 Science and the classifi cation of knowledge 226
IV Politics and ethical sociology
15 Spencer’s politics and the foundations of liberalism 247
16 Th e 1840s: Spencer’s early radicalism 261
17 Sociology as an ethical discipline 277
18 Sociology as political theory 293
19 Progress versus democracy 313
Conclusion 327
Notes 341
Bibliography 411
Index 427
vi
Preface
Writing about Herbert Spencer has made me aware of the narrowness of
academic disciplines. It has also increased the number of my scholarly debts.
Since Spencer cut across academic boundaries in framing his system of knowledge,
this has forced me to do the same. I have had to borrow freely from recent work
in Victorian history and literature as well as from more specialized scholarship in
history of science and philosophy, political theory, anthropology and sociology.
My obligations are too many to enumerate fully here, but I do feel that I must
mention how much I have gained from the lucid and stimulating ideas of Robert J.
Richards, George W. Stocking Jr and Frank M. Turner. Most of my other scholarly
debts are simple ones of gratitude to those whose work has provided mine with
insight. Sometimes, however, I have received great benefi t from disagreeing with
an author’s opinion, and using it as a stimulus for research and refl ection. While I
am not grateful on these occasions there is a sort of perverse obligation for which
I give credit in the references to various chapters.
Original research on Spencer has been a painstaking business, forcing me
to examine, and re-examine, all records with extraordinary scrupulousness
and suspicion. It was not that the material was forged or tampered with, but,
nonetheless, it was clear that much of it had been, in a sense, manufactured by
Spencer in such a way that it is now diffi cult to test for the truth. Th e root of
the problem is that, when old, he recalled the vast bulk of his correspondence
and had it destroyed, preserving only that material by which he wanted to be
remembered. While he exerted control over his posthumous reputation in order to
emphasize his originality and importance, his plan went awry and the opposite has
happened. Instead of his eff orts leading to admiration, the result was that his boasts
excited ridicule while his occasional ironic disclaimers were received as confessions
of naivety. In brief, rather than enhancing his fame Spencer’s management of
his manuscripts trapped his work and his reputation in a mausoleum whose
signifi cance could not be grasped by succeeding generations. To remedy this
problem was diffi cult because one could not overthrow the edifi ce; it was often
the sole authentic repository of Spencerian material. However, the vetting of this
vii
herbert spencer
source was onerous, not impossible, and in doing it I have restored to the man and
his ideas some of the brilliance they possessed in mid-Victorian England.
Th e research for this book has entailed my critically reading and sifting thousands
of Spencer letters that were entombed in the publications he arranged at the end
of his life. I have also compared his versions with the few hundred originals that
escaped the confl agration that consumed the others. In addition, I have sought
out any letters that he was unable to fi nd, together with any manuscripts by
acquaintances that mentioned him. Most of this material was deposited in a couple
of dozen archives – mostly in the United Kingdom – and references to it are given
in my footnotes. With the exception of the long-embargoed George Eliot letters
referred to in Chapter , surviving individual manuscripts hold few surprises,
but, collectively, they alter the picture of Spencer. My analysis of familiar and
unfamiliar manuscript material has been integrated with a thorough examination
of any nineteenth-century philosophical and scientifi c literature that could throw
light on either Spencer’s intentions or his arguments. At times, as I examined
old accession lists of books as they accumulated year by year in a library, or as I
checked every edition of a popular mid-nineteenth-century scientifi c textbook,
my eff orts seemed too exhaustive, even though they have not left me confi dent
that I have understood everything about Spencer’s contexts and texts. However, I
can at least make the weaker claim to have read everything that could be relevant.
Such modesty aside, I feel that my manuscript work, together with my labour on
nineteenth-century books, pamphlets and periodicals will permanently change
existing discussions of Spencer’s philosophy, and create new interpretive patterns
where none existed. Although I have discarded Spencer’s key claim – that he was
the autodidact who explored evolution – and showed that he was a syncretic
thinker rather than an original one, this will do his reputation a good service.
Some of his ideas are valuable precisely because they recycled and elevated the
more valuable insights of his contemporaries. While his theories were not always
the products of his imagination and logic, they possessed a consistent and clear
formulation, which is a permanent legacy from the nineteenth century.
On a personal note I must express my thanks to a number of scholars who
helped me understand Victorian culture and intellectual history. Beginning
with eff orts by Owen Chadwick, G. Kitson Clark and Duncan Forbes, various
scholars have attempted to educate me or, at least, remind me of literature I would
have otherwise missed. At diff erent times this task has been taken up by Sam
Adshead, Ruth Barton, Dinah Birch, Pietro Corsi, Paul Crook, Kate Flint, Knud
Haakonssen, Jose Harris, Ken Minogue, Maureen Montgomery, John Morrow
and Paul Weindling. If they have been unsuccessful in keeping me informed, the
fault is all mine.
I should also thank librarians and archivists at a number of depositaries,
especially the Bodleian Library, the University of Cambridge Library, the British
Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Birmingham Central Library, the
Manchester Central Library and the libraries of the London School of Economics,
Imperial College and the Royal Institution of Great Britain for their patience and
kindness. Th e interloan librarians at my own institution have been assiduous and
viii
preface
energetic, seldom failing to fi nd a rare title. Th anks also to Shari Wigley, Craig
Shatford and Felicity Hattrell for their assistance in proofreading and editorial
suggestions, Carol Davison for providing an index and Jill Dolby for patiently
typing many manuscript drafts. I should also add that I am grateful for suggestions
from my publisher’s readers and from my editors, especially Steven Gerrard and
Kate Williams. Last, but not least, I should express my thanks to Angela for
encouraging me to fi nish this book.
Part of the research for this book was conducted while I was a visiting fellow at
Magdalen College and, subsequently, Hamilton Fowler Senior Research Fellow
at Christ Church, Oxford. My own university, the University of Canterbury has
also been helpful by granting me two sabbatical leaves during the period I was
working on this subject. Without the support given to me by these institutions
the ten years I have spent writing this book would have stretched to the length of
time Spencer took to write his philosophy.
MF
Mark Francis is Professor of Political Science at the University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand. He is the author of Governors and Settlers: Images
of Authority in the British Colonies, 1820–1860 and A History of English
Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (with John Morrow).
ix
