Let us turn to Mr. Spencer’s treatise on _Social Statics_, and to the section of it in which he treats of patents—or as he himself describes them, “_the rights of property in ideas_.” He begins by complaining that the right of patenting “_inventions, patterns, or designs_” is not recognised as being based on any moral right at all, but is generally regarded as a kind of “_privilege_” or “_reward_.” “_The prevalence of such a belief_,” says Mr. Spencer, “_is by no means creditable to the national conscience. . . . To think_,” he exclaims, “_that a sinecurist should be held to have a ‘vested interest’ in his office, and a just title to compensation if it is abolished; and yet that an invention over which no end of mental toil has been spent, and on which the poor mechanic has laid out perhaps his last sixpence—an invention which he has completed entirely by his own labour and with his own materials—has wrought, as it were, out of the very substance of his own mind—should not be acknowledged as his property_!” _Social Statics_ is one of Mr. Spencer’s earlier works. Let us now consult his latest, the third and final volume of his _Principles of Sociology_; and here we shall find this same admission that the {87} great man’s achievements are wrought not out of aggregates of conditions, but “_out of the very substance of his own mind_,” emphasised by him as a practical truth, with all the vigour of a practical man. In his chapter on the “_Interdependence and Integration of Industrial Institutions_” he dwells with much eloquence on the almost incalculable benefits that have resulted, and extended themselves through the whole industrial world, from certain improvements introduced into the manufacture of steel. And to what were these improvements due? Mr. Spencer answers this question not merely by admitting, but by insisting with the fervour of a hero-worshipper, that they were due to the genius of one single man, namely Bessemer; and so obvious does this truth appear to him, that he devotes an indignant footnote to denouncing the governing classes for not being sufficiently alive to it, and for conferring on a man who, “_out of the very substance of his own mind_,” had wrought such gigantic and universally beneficial changes, no higher reward than the title of Sir Henry Bessemer—“_an honour_” he says, “_like that accorded to a third-rate public official on his retirement, or to a provincial mayor on the occasion of the Queen’s Jubilee_.”