Herbert Spencer

From Philosopedia

Spencer, Herbert (27 April 1820 - 8 December 1903)

An agnostic before Thomas H. Huxley originated the word, Spencer did not believe there is sufficient evidence either to prove or to disprove the existence of God and immortality. He coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and is credited with establishing sociology as a discipline.

Spencer's parents were originally Methodists, then nonconformists, but at an early age Spencer showed an inclination to think for himself concerning theological matters. His philosophic and religious beliefs are not easily labeled, for his philosophy was distinct from that of the various movements.

Spencer believed in the preeminence of the individual over society and of science over religion, part of the "First Positivism” alongside Auguste Comte in France.

He was a philosopher who offered the Victorians both metaphysical and moral certainty, and an explanation of the place of religion in a scientific world. His Introduction to Society (1873), in the chapter on “The Theological Bias,” contained his First Principles, a mordant attack on the Christian creed.

The Rationalist Press Association (RPA) was chosen to publish his Education (1861).

One of Spencer’s prayers included the following:

• O Lord, you know that I do not believe in you as you are described in the Bible and believed in by the Church. You know that I do not believe the Bible as the word of God. If it be true, as affirmed, that you created the universe, it follows that you have created all that is in it. You have created evil as well as good, the devil as well as the angels, hell as well as heaven. If you have made men at all, you made them as they are. If they are good, it is because you have made them so; if they are wicked, it is equally your work. If you are omnipotent and universal, as you are said to be, there can be no evil or wicked deed that is not the result of characters and conditions which you have created. If there is a hell and men are to be burned, it is because you have wished it to be so. It has pleased you to make them evil and wretched. You are not, then, good, nor do you love your creatures.

Five or so minutes later, he concludes,

• I can only be thankful that I am not cowardly enough to fear nor weak enough to worship so horrible a creature as you, the God of the Church. Amen.

In sociology, Spencer was the pioneer of the method of social theory which formulated general principles held to be laws of nature, and then justified propositions about social development and history on the basis of the said natural laws. For example, Spencer held that there was a fundamental law called “the law of the persistence of force” which caused continual change in organisms, “the law of the multiplication of effects,” which brought about greater diversity and ultimately an individualist society. Spencer took this as far as parallels between transport and other communication systems and the veins and nerve systems of animals.

In Facts and Comments, written the year before his death, he denies emphatically the common Christian assertion that Freethinkers “occupy themselves exclusively with material interests.” But he finds no ground whatever for belief in a future life, which is a superstition handed down from the savage. As there is no evidence of the existence of consciousness apart from brain, Spencer wrote, “we seem obliged to relinquish the thought that consciousness continued after physical organization has become inactive.”

Spencer “passed peacefully away” on 8 December 1903, and his remains were cremated at Golder’s Green. On September 16 he wrote to John Morley stating that he contemplated the end “as not far off - an end to which I look forward with satisfaction” - and that he had “interdicted any such ceremony as is performed over the bodies or ashes of those who adhere to the current creed.”

(See Jack Kaminsky’s article on Spencer in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7.)

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