Herbert Spencer Part II: The Grand Puzzle: Piecing Together A System of Synthetic Philosophy

Spencer’s A System of Synthetic Philosophy was the primary concentration of his writing efforts starting in the 1850s.  In 1858, drawing on the idea of the ‘New Reformation’ inspired by his time as an editor at the Leader, he began laying out its plan.  “At the beginning of 1858, Spencer drew up a scheme for A System of Synthetic Philosophy; and the prospectus, distributed in 1860, envisaged ten volumes” (Copleston 122).  This massive synthesis of science and philosophy would be his magnum opus.  This philosophical work was known all over the world in English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries.

Spencer was not a rich man and, as a result, took to selling subscriptions to his work.  Thus, by doing this, he could earn a living by writing full-time.  It later became a problem. After publishing First Principles in 1862, many respected theologians and public figures condemned him loudly.  It caused a financial hardship because many of Spencer’s subscribers were Christians.   Also, those who were in the science field began to condemn the use of the term Unknown as a reference or substitute for God.  “For a time, the evolutionists were severely ostracized by respectable people; they were denounced as immoral monsters, and it was thought good form to insult them publicly. Spencer’s subscribers fell away with every installment, and many defaulted on payments due for installments received” (Durant 147).  When Spencer’s friend and rival J.S. Mill heard that Spencer would be forced to discontinue his work, he offered him financial help, which was promptly refused outright.  Not to be discouraged, Mill went to several friends and encouraged them to subscribe at the rate of 250 copies each; Spencer objected to this as well.

Finally, a group of his admirers in the United States purchased seven thousand dollars in securities and made him the beneficiary of the dividends.  With his financial crisis solved, he could finally move forward.  If it had not been for Mill, A System of Synthetic Philosophy might never have happened.  It is interesting that Mill should have put so much effort into saving the philosophical system, which was at the time the prime rival to his system.

In Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, he lays out the core basis for A System of Synthetic Philosophy’s direction.  First and foremost, it is not an attack on or a confirmation of God.  It is instead a scientific investigation of the same questions that religion tries to answer.  “Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions. “Let science admit that its ‘laws’ apply only to phenomena and the relative; let religion admit that its theology is a rationalizing myth for a belief that defies conception. Let religion cease to picture the Absolute as a magnified man; much worse, as a cruel and bloodthirsty and treacherous monster, afflicted with “a love of adulation such as would he despised in a human being” (Qtd. in Durant 148).  Reconciliation between science and religion is to be a part of Spencer’s new reformation.

First Principle’s places evolution at the center of existence.  All the energy and all the matter, in both living creatures and throughout the universe, seek and move to achieve equilibrium.  Then, after equilibrium comes an eventual dissolution, one cannot help but see a bit of parallel with Hegel’s Dialectic, but instead of ending in perfection, the ending was more suitable to Schopenhauer’s philosophy.  “First Principles is a magnificent drama, telling with almost classic calm the story of the rise and fall, the evolution and dissolution, of planets and life and man; but it is a tragic drama, for which the fittest epilogue is Hamlet’s word—” The rest is silence” (Durant 149).  First Principles served as the forward for a work of philosophy that both defined and created much of the Victorian age.

Spencer’s views on evolution, which were put forth in The Principles of Biology, where he speculated that all organisms started out as relatively simple, basic, homogeneous structures.   Over time, and through evolution,n the organisms progress to differentiated structures with compartmentalized specialization and heterogeneity.  Spencer also tried to apply this principle to non-organic structures such as planets, stars, and solar systems.  He believed this to be a universal law.  Spencer was obviously wrong about non-organic structures, but this does seem to fit into evolution in many ways.  Evolution in this system was a matter of equilibrium.  “Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations” (Durant 150).  He was expounding the ideas of evolution for nearly a decade before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859.  Darwin’s term ‘survival of the fittest’ originated during a conversation between him and Spencer.  After Darwin had explained his work, Spencer called it ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and Darwin began to use it continuously ever after (Francis 3).  The Principles of Biology in no way expounds survival of the fittest because, in essence, this was Darwin’s theory, not Spencer’s.

The Principles of Psychology are the least impressive of Spencer’s ten volumes.  While great lengths are taken to expound hundreds of theories on mental categories and other ideas, there is little proof to substantiate it.  Time is taken to discuss in detail the workings of nerve endings, reflexes, and connective tissues, but noticeably, what is missing is the evidence.  What is most impressive is the fact that Spencer attempts a truly modern form of evolutionary psychology.  Through the positing of inheritable traits and instinctual behaviors, he was a full century ahead of his time.  “What strikes us at once is that for the first time in the history of psychology, we get here a resolutely evolutionist point of view, an attempt at genetic explanations, an effort to trace the bewildering complexities of thought down to the simplest of nervous operations, and finally to the motions of matter” (Durant 151).

Herbert Spencer’s work on The Principles of Sociology has been and is still held in high regard.   It was undoubtedly his favorite topic, and it showed, in his first book, Social Statics, to the last fascicle of The Principles of Sociology; over a stretch of almost half a century, his interest is predominantly in the problems of economics and government.  “He begins and ends, like Plato, with discourses on moral and political justice. No man, not even Comte (founder of the science and maker of the word), has done so much for sociology” (Durant 152).  Spencer rejected both Comte’s atheism and his more idealistic notions, instead preferring to replace them with his own evolutionary ideas.

Regarding the claims of Spencer’s Social Darwinism, it must be remembered first that he did not advocate Darwinism.  Spencer’s ideas on evolution were primarily based on those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.  Darwinism was centered on the idea of survival of the fittest.  Spencer’s ideas, as shown through his sociology, were not based on the survival of the fittest, which was a reproductive theory.  Instead, as remarked earlier, his views of evolution were those of simple homogeneous structures moving over time to more complex and heterogeneous structures until they reached a point of equilibrium.  Hence, when exposed to external pressures, an organism evolves special organs and structures that help achieve equilibrium with the outside environment.

Spencer viewed society as a social organism that was always moving towards heterogeneity, as it sought to achieve equilibrium with pressures from outside its environment. “A social organism is like an individual organism in; these essential traits: that it grows; that while growing it becomes more complex; that while becoming more complex, its parts acquire increasing mutual dependence; that its life is immense in length compared with the lives of its component units;… that in both cases there is increasing integration accompanied by increasing heterogeneity” (Qtd. in Durant 152).  When applied to societies, one finds that certain specialized institutions, such as religion, appear to help achieve equilibrium in response to external pressures, such as war or unexplained environmental changes.

Spencer classified societies into two types, militant or industrial.  In his mind, militant societies were less advanced and more savage.  Since all power was focused centrally within a militant society, it was more homogenous, which, based on his ideas of evolution, was less evolved.  Militant societies were marked by less freedom for individuals and a greater propensity for savagery internally, as well as externally.

As the societal organism, advanced control or power would begin to spread out to other institutions other than the central government, and as these institutions increased, so would the heterogeneity and complexity.  “Students of the state habitually classify societies according as their governments are monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic; but these are superficial distinctions; the great dividing line is that which separates militant from industrial societies, nations that live by war from those that live by work” (Durant 153).  All societies would eventually move from militant to industrial in nature, and with greater complexity, more individual freedoms would appear.  The idea would be that eventually, as the most advanced societies evolved, complexity would become such that individual freedom would be absolute and there would be little or no violence or savagery.  Thus, a peaceful anarchism would occur.

One should not mistake this view by Spencer for the idea that he believed society was an actual organism, at least not in the same sense as a living organism, where all control rests in a relatively small area of the brain.  If one were to believe that this was his intention, it might lead to the conclusion that he was implying that the dissolution of intelligence in actual living creatures was preferred, and this was not the case.  Spencer was not a proponent of collectivism or a strong centralized authority in society, and so the analogy did not extend to the ordering of government.  “An enthusiast for the interpretation of political society as an organism might, of course, try to find detailed analogies between differentiation of functions and the organic body, and in society.  But this might lead him into speaking, for example, as though the government were analogous to the brain and as though the other parts of society should leave all thinking to the government and obey all of its decisions” (Copleston 131).

Although Spencer’s views are not based on Darwin’s survival of the fittest, he was attacked in the first half of the twentieth century relentlessly for his adherence to laissez-faire economics and for being a proponent of Social Darwinism.  Spencer’s philosophy of sociology is the underlying foundation of his views regarding ethics and morals as well.  The logical outcome is that the individual does not exist for the benefit of the collective state, but instead, in more evolved societies, the state exists for the benefit and protection of the individual (Durant 155).  This is indeed in line with John Locke’s concept that the state only exists to protect men’s rights and property.

The Principles of Ethics comprises the final two volumes of Spencer’s A System of Synthetic Philosophy.  In it, he laid out in full his ethical theory of Rational Utilitarianism, which is not to be confused with the Empirical Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham.  The core basis for Spencer’s ethics is, first and foremost, biology and, of course, evolution (Durant 155).  This theory has also been explained in Social Statics, nearly half a century before.  Human beings are organisms, and organisms must exercise their faculties to survive.  The faculties consist of sight, auditory, speech, consumption of food, drinking, socializing, and all other manner of human activity.  Spencer maintains that all organisms, including humans, do not exercise faculties frivolously, and so every action is an intuitive, yet rationally calculated move to ensure their survival.  Hence, even recreation and play are necessary for survival. The exercise of faculties is the exercise of life; any prohibition of them is death; partial restriction of the faculties is partial death, and so on.

It can be reasoned from here that each person should be allowed to do whatever they must to achieve as full an exercise of their faculties as possible.  The result is The Theory of Rational Utilitarianism.  One might wonder how this differs with respect to Bentham’s version of utility or Mill’s?  Spencer maintains it is impossible to account for what each man needs to find happiness or to define happiness.  Inevitably, under Bentham’s system, individuals were hurt because what mattered was that society undertook actions that benefited the majority, and often this led to an injustice perpetrated on the minority.  Spencer referred to Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism as the ‘Expediency-philosophy’ (Spencer, The Complete Works of Herbert Spencer, Location 39489).  He maintained that instead of trying to figure out what would make the most people happy and then pass the laws for it, it was better to pass as few laws as possible, thereby letting each person pursue their happiness with fewer barriers.

 It led to his maxim of Rational Utilitarianism:

Mark now, however, that these supplementary restrictions are of quite inferior authority to the original law. Instead of being, like it, capable of strictly scientific development, they (under existing circumstances) can be unfolded only into superior forms of expediency. The limit put to each man’s freedom, by the like freedom of every other man, is a limit almost always possible of exact ascertainment; for let the condition of things be what it may, the respective amounts of freedom men assume can be compared, and the equality or inequality of those amounts recognized. But when we set about drawing practical deductions from the propositions that a man is not at liberty to do things injurious to himself, and that he is not at liberty (except in cases like those lately cited) to do what may give unhappiness to his neighbours, we find ourselves involved in complicated estimates of pleasures and pains, to the obvious peril of our conclusions. (Spencer, The Complete Works of Herbert Spencer, Location 40981)

Spencer found that biological conclusions supported natural law theories and intuition-based morality, which aligns with Common Sense philosophy.  This put him at odds with Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism, or ‘Expedience-Philosophy,’ which he blamed for transforming classical liberalism into socialism.  In Spencer’s opinion, the ideas of Bentham and Mill led to the encroachment of personal freedoms in the name of greater happiness for the majority.  Modern Liberalism was a hard pill for Spencer to swallow, and his opposition to the social programs and economic interventions it created is the single biggest factor in why he was labeled a Social Darwinist by many socialist and utilitarian intellectuals.