Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of ContentsLord, John
Philosophy
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents
Lord, John
History
Before taking leave of the "Principles of Sociology," we should caution
the reader against a misconception that might seem, at first sight, to
find some warrant in the following remark of a sympathetic reviewer:
"Like Aristotle, he [Mr. Spencer] has had to delegate large portions of
his work to be done for him by others." As our author has himself
pointed out in "Facts and Comments," the reviewer's reference will be
rightly interpreted by those who know that the work delegated by
Aristotle to others was simply the _collection_ of materials for his
Natural History, not the classification of those materials, much less
the drawing of inductions from them. As not one reader in ten knows
this, however, wrong impressions are likely to be made by the reviewer's
remark. Mr. Spencer's name being especially associated with the
"Synthetic Philosophy," the sentence quoted will suggest to many the
thought that large portions of that work were written by deputy. This,
of course, the reviewer did not mean to say. The work to which he
referred is entitled "Descriptive Sociology, or groups of sociological
facts, classified and arranged by Herbert Spencer, compiled and
abstracted by David Duncan, Richard Scheppig and James Collier," eight
parts of which have thus far appeared. Knowing that he should be unable
to read all the works of travel and history containing the facts he
should need when dealing with the science of society, Mr. Spencer
engaged these gentlemen--first one, then two, then three--to read up for
him and arrange the extracts they made in a manner prescribed. With much
material he had himself accumulated in the course of many years, our
author incorporated a much larger amount of material derived from the
compilations just mentioned when writing the "Principles of Sociology."
VI.
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