Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 62:246 (Apr 1905)
Article: Herbert Spencer, The Apostle Of Agnosticism
Author: Gabriel Campbell

BSac 62:246 (April 1905) p. 304

Herbert Spencer, The Apostle Of Agnosticism1

Professor Gabriel Campbell

In the personality of Herbert Spencer, the opportunity to study interrelations of mind and body, thinker and thinking, is perhaps unsurpassed. His extensive writings covered a vast variety of subjects; in published criticism his ideas were contested by his contemporaries; a copious Autobiography has developed the personal interpretation of himself; now, following his decease, has appeared an array of theses characterizing, from without, the man and his work.

Liereditary Influences

Mr. Spencer was the product of nonconformist ancestry, his father even dissenting from the Dissenters, the son displaying an impulsive antipathy to authority, political as well as religious, expressions of adoration finding in him, he avers, no echoes. The father followed the grandfather as a teacher. He was inclined, however, more to speculation than to instructing along critical lines of logic and fact. The grandfather was predisposed to melancholy moods, the father to sundry eccentricities, physical impairment in each case evidently the cause; broken health burdened the father’s advancing years.

Infirmities inherited prevented Herbert from attending school and devoting himself to books. He was consequently

BSac 62:246 (April 1905) p. 305

debarred from becoming a scholar in philosophy or an expert in science. The father speculative, the son was a castle-builder. Dwelling with intense concentration upon some problem, he would with remarkable facility construe and construct, all the more successfully because he was kept free from the confusion of conflicting opinions which ample book-lore would have brought to view.

Youthful Development

In lieu of academic training, young Spencer entered an engineering office, and for a number of years had experience in railway management. This afforded him occasion to participate in political life as well, his duties from time to time calling him to London, where he had the privilege of meeting members of Parliament who were personally, or as representative of committees, influential in guarding the interests of railway companies.

Meantime, with a passion for expression (not to say dictation) he begins to write for the press. A series of articles appears in the Nonconformist radically criticising existing government policies. By the time he was two and twenty these articles were issued independently, under the title, “The Proper Sphere of Government.” With the enthusiasm of youth he is impelled to enter upon a scheme, more or less wild, for the extension of individual right and suffrage. He is restrai...