Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 3 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 3 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
bills, its complex transactions, and its Clearing-house. Pack-horses,
then waggons, then coaches, then steam-carriages on common roads, and,
finally, steam-carriages on roads made for them—such has been the slow
genesis of our present means of communication. Not a trade in the
directory but has formed itself an apparatus of manufacturers, brokers,
travellers, and retailers, in so gradual a way that no one can trace
the steps. And so with organizations of another order. The Zoological
Gardens began as the private collection of a few naturalists. The best
working-class school known—that at Price’s factory—commenced with
half-a-dozen boys sitting among the candle-boxes, after hours, to teach
themselves writing with worn-out pens. Mark, too, that as a consequence
of their mode of growth, these spontaneously-formed agencies expand to
any extent required. The same stimulus which brought them into being
makes them send their ramifications wherever they are needed. But
supply does not thus readily follow demand in governmental agencies.
Appoint a board and a staff, fix their duties, and let the apparatus
have a generation or two to consolidate, and you cannot get it to
fulfil larger requirements without some act of parliament obtained only
after long delay and difficulty.
Were there space, much more might be said upon the superiority of what
naturalists would call the _exogenous_ order of institutions over the
_endogenous_ one. But, from the point of view indicated, the further
contrasts between their characteristics will be sufficiently visible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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