HERBERT SPENCER.--Though there were not wanting in England writers to exploit Darwinian theories in the interests of a narrow secularism, their work was not of first-rate importance, and need not detain us. A new evolutionary philosophy was, however, worked out by a conscientious thinker of a different calibre--Mr. Herbert Spencer. He indeed may be described as the Aristotle of a new world-view. He attempted to co-ordinate and unify all human knowledge, and to present the world with a final philosophy based upon the _data_ supplied by natural science. To this ambitious task he devoted a lifetime of patient work, broken by intervals of ill-health. In 1850 the _System of Synthetic Philosophy_ was projected; its _First Principles_ were published in 1862, but it was not until 1896 that the gigantic enterprise was complete. Spencer was inspired neither by hostility to religion in general, nor to Christianity in particular. The motive of his work was a more honourable one. He felt, with many of his contemporaries, that the foundations of the old religion were no longer secure, and that the old sanctions of morality were already gravely compromised; and he wished to supply a new creed and a new discipline in the place of these. His principal objects were social and ethical. And in this important respect he may be associated with Comte. Both were sociologists and moralists before they were philosophers, which accounts for their overlooking and underestimating various important philosophic difficulties. A few remarks about Spencer's system are here not out of place. He attempted to reduce experience to a unity by seeking evidence for the existence of a single and universal _law_. This unifying principle he found in a general law of evolution. He formulated this law in language which is perhaps less obscure than it seems, and which practically amounts to this, that there is a perpetual process going on which reduces disorder to order, undifferentiated sameness to specialised variety.[42] The _First Principles_ was published before the _Origin of Species_, and the confirmation which Darwin's work supplied to Spencer's theory must have recommended the latter to the minds of scientifically trained thinkers. Moreover, Spencer sanctioned a hopeful outlook; evolutionary optimism was an attractive and an idealistic, as well as a reasonable philosophy. It demanded the subordination of the individual to society, it urged the necessity of self-discipline and of industry, and pointed (if these conditions were fulfilled) to a brighter future, and to a new humanity. The generous idealism of the following passage is characteristic of Spencer's outlook, and of those who thought--and hoped--with him; it occurs at the end of his _Principles of Ethics_: