E-text prepared by Adrian Mastronardi, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/spencersphilosop00morgrich Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by curly brackets is subscripted (example: H{2}O) unless preceded by a carat character, in which case it is superscripted (example: ^{2}). SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE The Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at the Museum 7 November, 1913 by C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S. Price Two Shillings net Oxford At the Clarendon Press MCMXIII Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto Melbourne Bombay Humphrey Milford M.A. Publisher to the University SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on _The Scientific Use of the Imagination_. The vision of the conquest of nature by physical science--a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my wondering gaze--was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of _us_--the enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the inner core of evolution lay revealed. 'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself--emotion, intellect and all their phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud.'[1]