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In this final essay on the pessimism of Herbert Spencer, I will discuss a major factor that I only touched on previously, namely, Spencer’s increasing disillusionment with democracy.

In his early years Spencer was a vigorous champion of “complete suffrage,” i.e., of extending the right to vote to all adults, including women. Social Statics (1851) includes a chapter on “The Rights of Women”—a magnificent defense of the moral and intellectual equality of women, and a demand for the recognition of their equal rights.

The extension of the law of equal freedom to both sexes will doubtless be objected to, on the ground that the political privileges exercised by men must thereby be ceded to women also. Of course they must; and why not?

After shooting down various arguments against women’s suffrage, Spencer concluded:

Thus it has been shown that the rights of women must stand or fall with those of men; derived as they are from the same authority; involved in the same axiom; demonstrated by the same argument. [The] law of equal freedom applies alike to both sexes….

Spencer’s defense of women went far beyond calling for equal political rights. Indeed, much of “The Rights of Woman” is devoted to criticizing the domestic despotism that many husbands exercised over their wives in Victorian England. Husbands were legally permitted to beat their wives, for example—a policy that Spencer condemned as barbaric. Englishmen “sit over our tea-tables, and pass criticisms upon national character, or philosophize upon the development of civilized institutions, quietly taking it for granted that we are civilized,” while remaining blind to the remnants of barbarism in their treatment of women.

According to Spencer, the domestic institutions of a country are inextricably intertwined with its political institutions. “Despotism in the state is necessarily associated with despotism in the family.” A culture in which husbands dominate their wives can never serve as the foundation of a free society.

In a stirring passage that has been neglected by most historians of feminism, Spencer insisted that romantic love cannot coexist with coercion or in a superior-subordinate relationship. Love can subsist and flourish only between equals.

Command is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever of refinement—whatsoever of beauty—whatsoever of poetry, there is in the passion that unites the sexes, withers up and dies in the cold atmosphere of authority. Native as they are to such widely-separated regions of our nature, Love and Coercion cannot possibly flourish together. The one grows out of our best feelings: the other has its root in our worst. Love is sympathetic: Coercion is callous. Love is gentle: Coercion is harsh. Love is self-sacrificing: Coercion is selfish. How then can they co-exist? It is the property of the first to attract; whilst it is that of the last to repel: and, conflicting as they thus do, it is the constant tendency of each to destroy the other. Let whoever thinks the two compatible imagine himself acting the master over his betrothed. Does he believe that he could do this without any injury to the subsisting relationship? Does he not know rather that a bad effect would be produced upon the feelings of both parties by the assumption of such an attitude? And confessing this, as he must, is he superstitious enough to suppose that the going through a form of words will render harmless that use of command which was previously hurtful?

Of all the causes which conspire to produce the disappointment of those glowing hopes with which married life is usually entered upon, none is so potent as this supremacy of sex—this degradation of what should be a free and equal relationship into one of ruler and subject—this supplanting of the sway of affection by the sway of authority. Only as that condition of slavery to which women are condemned amongst barbarous nations is ameliorated, does ideal love become possible; and only when that condition of slavery shall have been wholly abolished, will ideal love attain fullness and permanence.

I have quoted this passage at length for a reason. Spencer later rescinded his call to extend voting rights to women—or, to be more precise, he argued that this reform should be postponed until sometime into the future. Extending the franchise to women should be an “ultimate” measure, not an “immediate” one. Spencer’s new position was based on his belief that most women of his day were likely to vote for statist policies, especially for laws that appeared to promote humanitarian causes.

Historians have had a field day with Spencer’s reversal. For example, Mark Francis, in Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life (Cornell University Press, 2007, p. 77), attributes Spencer’s change of mind about women’s suffrage to “his personal fear of women.” (Francis’s cheesy psychoanalysis of Spencer is not unusual; this kind of blather has been a common tactic of Spencer “scholars” for decades.)

Whatever one may think about Spencer’s later position on voting rights, it is important to understand that he did not retreat from his other positions regarding women. In his drastically “abridged and revised” edition of Social Statics published in 1892, Spencer still included a chapter on the rights of women, and he still condemned “matrimonial servitude” (as discussed the passage quoted above) and other aspects of female inequality. The only significant change in this chapter is its omission of the argument for women’s suffrage.

Another thing we should keep in mind is Spencer’s belief that a free society should be the ultimate goal of political reforms, and that specific reforms should be evaluated according to the likelihood that they will further this goal.

In a fascinating letter to J.S. Mill (August 9, 1867) about women’s suffrage, Spencer explained that voting rights are “simply means to an end”—the end in this case being “the securing the greatest amount of individual freedom.” This is “real liberty in comparison with which right of voting is a nominal liberty.”

After giving two reasons why women’s suffrage would probably diminish real liberty, Spencer continued:

To put the right construction on these reasonings of mine, you must bear in mind that to me the limitation of the functions of the State is the question of questions, in comparison with which all other political questions are trivial; and that to me electoral changes and other changes in forms of government are of interest mainly as they promise to make men freer….

In An Autobiography, Spencer attributed his “juvenile radicalism” to the erroneous belief that it is only necessary “to establish a form of government theoretically more equitable, to remedy the evils under which society suffered.” An older Spencer came to believe that women’s suffrage, though theoretically equitable as an ideal, would decrease rather than increase the prospects for liberty in the short run.

Spencer’s later opposition to women’s suffrage should be viewed in the broader context of his extreme skepticism about voting in general. Although Spencer supported the Reform Act of 1867, which enfranchised 1,500,000 working class men (mainly skilled artisans), he later wondered why he had done so, given that he clearly understood, seven years earlier, the likely political outcome. In a remarkable exercise in critical self-analysis, which makes An Autobiography so fascinating to read, Spencer wrote:

I myself illustrated the truth that feeling rather than intellect guides; for, apparently forgetting these conclusions, I approved that wide extension of the franchise effected by the Reform Bill of 1867. The sentiment of early years, so strongly enlisted on behalf of the seemingly just principle of giving equal political powers to all men, proved too strong for the restraints of my calmer judgments. And then, beyond those recognized truths which feeling led me to ignore, there were other truths unrecognized which I ought not to have overlooked….

The earlier “conclusions” to which Spencer refers appeared in an article published in 1860, “Parliamentary Reform: The Dangers and the Safeguards.” Spencer dismissed the fears of “irrational alarmists” who opposed giving the vote to “artisans and others of their grade” on the grounds that the working classes would use their political power to expropriate property from others with more wealth. By this he meant that he did not expect the working classes to expropriate property outright, by direct means, such as by nationalizing industries. But Spencer did fear that newly enfranchised workers would use their political power to expropriate private property, especially the property of capitalists and employers, indirectly, so he spent much of this article analyzing the problem and searching for a solution.

We should not suppose that Spencer viewed the English upper class as morally superior to their supposed social inferiors. On the contrary, the current ruling class in England had used its political power to enrich itself by unjust means, and the resulting “evils” were “as great if not greater” than the potential consequences of extending the suffrage.

Spencer hoped that a broader distribution of political power would bring about a balance of interests, so that no one class could use the political machinery to expropriate wealth from other classes. But he had his doubts, even in 1860, just nine years after the publication of Social Statics. So long as there exists a coercive institution that enables some people to benefit at the expense of others, then there will always be some people who will use political rather than economic means to further their own interests.

Spencer maintained that extending the franchise would be desirable only if it were accompanied by a decrease in the powers of government. Only if the dangerous weapon of governmental power were placed beyond the reach of everyone could we be reasonably certain that no group or class would use political power to exploit others. Only, in other words, if government were reduced to its proper function of protecting and enforcing the equal rights of all citizens would the extension of voting rights bring about anything other than the replacement of “the old class-legislation by a new class-legislation.”

Of course, Spencer knew that his ideal limited government would not come about in the near future, so he proposed a stopgap measure: Those who vote for government programs should also be among those who are taxed to pay for them. Only if all voters feel the immediate financial burdens entailed by the policies they support will they learn, through experience, the consequences of their actions and come to understand that nothing is free. To exempt some voters from the financial consequences of their political actions merely provides them with an incentive to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

By the time he wrote An Autobiography, Spencer believed that the most disastrous effect of democracy in England was the growth of a powerful and potentially permanent bureaucracy. With each political reform that supposedly benefited the working classes came a new administrative agency, and this momentum toward bigger government would be virtually impossible to stop.

For the concomitant of that legislation which more and more advantages the employed classes at the expense of the employing classes, is the growth of an administrative system becoming ever more powerful and peremptory—a new governing agency which the emancipated people are unawares elaborating for themselves, while thinking only of gaining the promised benefits. Unceasing development of this, daily more rapid, has now become inevitable, for the reason that both electors and their representatives invoke with increasing urgency public help, public expenditure, and public regulation, which all imply a continually augmenting army of officials—an army which, by the restrictions and dictations its members enforce, gradually decreases the freedom of citizens, at the same time that it further decreases this freedom by demanding that more and more of their labour shall be devoted to maintaining it and paying for the work it superintends. The insidious growth of this organized and consolidated bureaucracy will go on, because the electorate cannot conceive the general but distant evils it must entail, in contrast with the special and immediate advantages to be gained by its action. For the masses can appreciate nothing but material boons—better homes, shorter hours, higher wages, more regular work.

Having devoted seven essays to the pessimism of Herbert Spencer, I may be expected by some readers to end this series on an optimistic note. But I cannot, so I must leave this Panglossian task to others.

I would, however, like to highlight a point that Spencer made repeatedly throughout his life, namely, that defenders of freedom should always stress and teach fundamental principles about individual rights and the proper functions of government, even when involved in political campaigns and other practical activities.

Although Spencer became a pessimist in later life, he did not abandon all hope for the future. He did not believe political improvements to be impossible in every case, even if the quest for political perfection is quixotic. But no lasting improvements will come about unless enough people embrace the basic principles of a free society. As Spencer put it:

If these [political] evils can be prevented at all, they can be prevented only by establishing in the public mind a profound conviction that there are certain definite limits to the functions of the State; and that these limits ought on no account to be transgressed.

It was early in 1858 that Herbert Spencer, then thirty-seven, sketched the first outline of what would become his ten-volume Synthetic Philosophy—one of the most ambitious intellectual projects of the nineteenth century. As Spencer later observed, this was “the inception of the undertaking to which the rest of my life was to be devoted.”

It took nearly forty years for Spencer to complete his masterpiece. Walter Troughton, Spencer’s secretary at the time, described the final moments of this vast project:

Mr. Spencer was seventy-six years of age when he dictated to me the last words of “Industrial Institutions,” with the completion of which the Synthetic Philosophy was finished—to be precise it was on the 13 August, 1896. Rising slowly from his seat in the study at 64, Avenue Road, his face beaming with joy, he extended his hand across the table, and we shook hands on the auspicious event. “I have finished the task I have lived for,” was all he said, and then resumed his seat. The elation was only momentary and his features quickly resumed their customary composure.

Spencer completed his Synthetic Philosophy by adding two chapters to The Principles of Sociology. These chapters (“The Near Future” and “Conclusion”) discuss the future of freedom in Europe and are therefore indispensable to understanding Spencer’s later pessimism.

Spencer began by noting that sociology—a generic label he used to encompass all social sciences, including economics—should be able to tell us something about the future, based on current trends. But Spencer was cautious about making predictions, owing to the many variables involved.

Existing factors are so numerous and conflicting, and the emergence of new factors, not in any way to be anticipated, so probable, as to make all speculations hazardous, and to make valueless all conclusions save those of the most general kind.

When writing as a social scientist, Spencer was somewhat more circumspect in his pessimism than we find in his letters and popular essays. He acknowledged that the social indicators for the future of freedom were mixed:

The baser instincts, which dominated during the long ages of savage warfare, are being invigorated by revived militancy; while the many beneficent activities distinguishing our age, imply a fostering of the higher sentiments. There is a moral struggle of which the average effect cannot be estimated.

Despite this difficulty, Spencer argued that we can use the principle of self-ownership to ascertain whether a society is progressing toward greater freedom or regressing into greater statism.

[T]o be rightly drawn, our conclusions about impending social changes must be guided by observing whether the movement is towards ownership of each man by others or towards ownership of each man by himself, and towards the corresponding emotions and thoughts. Practically it matters little what is the character of the ownership by others—whether it is ownership by a monarch, by an oligarchy, by a democratic majority, or by a communistic organization. The question for each is how far he is prevented from using his faculties for his own advantage and compelled to use them for others’ advantage, not what is the power which compels him or prevents him.

Using self-ownership as a gauge, Spencer analyzed the political condition of three countries during the late nineteenth century: Germany, France, and England. His treatments are fascinating examples of how a founding father of sociology used the moral standard of self-ownership in his work, and how he applied his abstract principles to some concrete particulars of his own day.

Germany had a long tradition of militarism, according to Spencer, and this militarism inevitably generated a great deal of governmental control over the personal, social, and economic activities of the German people. From old age pensions to compulsory trade unions, these “and many other regulations, alike of employers and employed, make them in so far creatures of the State, not having the unrestrained use of their own faculties.”

Before proceeding, I need to clarify a point about Spencer’s use of the terms “militant” and “industrial” as tags for polar types of social organization. Spencer’s use of “industrial” to describe the social form dominated by “voluntary co-operation” was an unfortunate label in some ways, because it misled later commentators. According to some of his critics, Spencer failed to appreciate how highly industrialized societies could be organized along “militant” lines, i.e., how industrial societies could be coercively regimented and dominated by government.

In fact, Spencer was well aware of this possibility, and he frequently discussed the development of regimented industrial societies. Specifically, he called attention to the development of entrenched bureaucracies that take on a life of their own, become politically autonomous, and control vast areas of social and economic activities. (Although Spencer generally referred to such societies as “socialistic” or “communistic,” some of his portrayals come eerily close to describing what would later be called “fascism.”)

As Spencer wrote, after noting the widespread appeal of “the socialistic movement” in Germany:

[T]he socialistic régime is simply another form of the bureaucratic régime. Military regimentation, civil regimentation, and industrial regimentation are in their natures essentially the same….

Spencer obviously had no hope for the “near future” of Germany.

And when we remember how lately feudalism has died out in Germany—how little Germans have been accustomed to self-ownership and how much to ownership by others—we may understand how unobjectionable to them seems that system of ownership by others which State-socialism implies.

Turning to France, Spencer called attention to “the competition between Germany and France in their military developments.” The French military had expanded dramatically in recent years, as the French government attempted to compete with Germany and other European powers for the acquisition of colonies—or what Spencer called “political burglaries.”

Spencer never tired of pointing out that a society focused on war and conquest will invariably develop a corresponding “militant” social structure. As more national resources are demanded for military adventures, citizens will suffer heavy taxes and find that their personal lives are increasingly regimented by a bureaucratic State. Consider this remark about the French military:

To support this non-productive class owned by the State as fighters, the State makes the workers surrender a proportionate part of their earnings, and owns them to the extent of that part—to a much larger extent, as we shall presently see. Militant activity accompanies this militant organization.

Like Alexis de Tocqueville before him, Spencer understood that France had been trending toward political centralization for centuries during the Ancien Régime, that the French Revolution accelerated this trend, and that the process continued apace after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The results were a bureaucratic régime, a “rage for uniformity” enforced by a system of state education, and a society “which values equality much more than liberty,” in which people do not object to coercion provided “all are equally coerced.”

By English standards, French taxes were excessive. According to some French economists cited by Spencer, the civil and military expenditures of the French government absorbed 30 percent of “the annual exchangeable produce” of the country. Spencer compared this to the feudal corvée, according to which medieval serfs were required to devote one-third of their labor to working the lands of their overlords. The fact that serfdom demanded unpaid labor directly, whereas the French government confiscated an equal amount in money, was, for Spencer, a distinction without a difference.

In feudal days the serf did corvées for his lord, working on his estate during so many days in the year; and now, during over 90 days in the year, a modern Frenchman does corvées for his government. To that extent he is a serf of the community; for it matters not whether he gives so much work or whether he gives an equivalent in money.

This political situation led Spencer to reach the same pessimistic conclusion about most French citizens that he had reached about most German citizens.

Inheriting military traditions in which he glories, and subject at school to a discipline of military strictness, he, without repugnance, accepts the idea of industrial regimentation; and does not resent the suggestion that for the sake of being taken care of he should put himself under a universal directive organization. Indeed he has in large measure done this already.

Before proceeding, it is essential that we understand the line of reasoning that Spencer used in analyzing the future of freedom in Germany and France.

In my last essay I discussed what Spencer variously called the “sentiment of liberty” and the “sentiment of justice.” This sentiment, without which a free society cannot develop, is the moral feeling that causes us to resent governmental activities that violate the Law of Equal Freedom, according to which every person should be free to act on his own judgment, so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others.

According to Spencer, the sentiment of liberty cannot develop without a prolonged state of peace—or “permanent peace,” as he sometimes called it — for it is only during peacetime that people can pursue their own interests as they see fit, while respecting the equal rights of others. As individuals become accustomed to the “voluntary co-operation” that characterizes “régimes of contract,” they adapt to their social environment by developing the appropriate moral sentiments—most notably, the sentiment of liberty.

When Spencer analyzed the evil consequences of war and aggressive governments, he did much more than discuss the injustices committed against the immediate victims of war. As a sociologist, he also analyzed the effects of the external activities of a warlike government on the internal organization of the society which it governs. He insisted that what the historian Harry Elmer Barnes called “perpetual war for perpetual peace” will invariably lead to the loss of civil and economic liberties and thereby generate a “militant” form of social organization—a hierarchical, bureaucratic structure in which individuals surrender their self-ownership in favor of ownership by the State or “society.”

Why is this inevitable? Because in wartime all individual purposes are subordinated to the single, overarching goal of defeating an enemy, whether real or imagined. As this situation continues, people will adapt to their militant social environment and develop the sentiments associated with obedience to the State instead of the sentiments associated with self-ownership.

Thus, if Spencer was pessimistic about the future of Germany and France, his outlook was based on far more than the current political conditions of those countries. Rather, he focused on the moral sentiments prevalent in those countries—sentiments that had developed over a long period of time, as the inhabitants of Germany and France adapted to their militant social environments.

As Spencer saw the matter, alterations in the form of a government, the replacement of one ruling clique by another, and similar changes were usually superficial. What ultimately matters is the degree of self-ownership present in a given society, and this will be determined not by changes in form or personnel but by the characters of most people in that society. When the sentiment of liberty is not deeply rooted and widely diffused, freedom has little chance.

In the next (and probably last) essay in this series, I will consider Spencer’s analysis of political and cultural developments in England, including his critical assessment of democracy.

To be continued….

In my last essay I noted the stress that Herbert Spencer placed on sentiments, or moral feelings, and how he regarded sentiments as more fundamental than ideas in achieving a free society. This does not mean, however, that Spencer failed to appreciate the importance of ideas. In this essay I will explore some of these intellectual factors, as presented by Spencer in a wide range of books, articles, and letters.

In a letter (Dec. 12, 1893) to the American Moncure D. Conway – a fellow libertarian, a former abolitionist, and the author of an important biography of Thomas Paine – Spencer wrote: “As you rightly point out, people do not at all understand the principles of liberty.” But after expressing this measure of agreement with Conway, Spencer continued:

But here there is, I think, a shortcoming in your conception. They have no true idea of liberty because they have no true sentiment of liberty. No theory is of much service in the matter without a character responding to the theory – without a feeling which prompts the assertion of individual freedom and is indignant against aggressions upon that freedom, whether against self or others. Men care nothing about a principle, even if they understand it, unless they have emotions responding to it. When adequately strong the appropriate emotion prompts resistance to interference with individual action, whether by an individual tyrant or by a tyrant majority; but, at present, in the absence of the proper emotion, there exists almost everywhere the miserable superstition that the majority has a right to dictate to the individual about everything whatever….To dissipate the superstition that the majority has unlimited powers is of more importance than anything else in the field of politics.

Spencer’s belief that few of his contemporaries fully possessed the sentiment of justice was the foundation for much of his later pessimism. As he said in a letter to J. A. Skilton (Jan. 10, 1895):

You have faith in teaching, which I have not – you believe men are going to be changed in their conduct by being shown what line of conduct is rational. I believe no such thing. Men are not rational beings, as commonly supposed.

Despite his bleak assessment of human rationality, Spencer did allow some role – indeed, a very important role — for ideas. As he indicated in his letter to Skilton, although teaching ideas about liberty will not bring about a free society unless those ideas are accompanied by the appropriate sentiments – a process that will take a long time, even under the most favorable circumstances – such teaching can check “retrograde action.” In other words, teaching ideas about liberty can retard the descent of a society into statism and thereby create some breathing room for the sentiment of liberty to become more widespread.  

To appreciate what Spencer was getting at here, we need to understand that he viewed the sentiment of justice as having two aspects. The first aspect, which he called “egoistic” (self-regarding), is the natural resentment we feel when an injustice is committed against ourselves. The second aspect, which he called “altruistic” (other-regarding), is the resentment we feel when an injustice is committed against someone else.

Beatrice Potter once observed that Spencer rarely got angry, except when he learned of an injustice committed by government. Spencer could become livid when this happened, and the intensity of his reaction increased when others did not share his outrage.  

This was the “altruistic” aspect of the sentiment of justice that was lacking in most people, according to Spencer, and a free society would be impossible until this sentiment became widespread. Why? Because however much people understand, on an intellectual level, the injustices committed by government, they will not be motivated to rectify those injustices until and unless their emotions follow suit.

It is easy, because it is natural, to become indignant when we are personally victimized by government. But it is equally easy to dismiss or overlook other victims of injustice, especially if we disagree with their beliefs or lifestyles, when the unjust acts do not affect us personally.

Spencer was convinced that a purely self-regarding reaction to injustice could never provide the foundation for a free society. Not until a sufficient number of people empathize with other victims of governmental injustice – whether those victims are rich or poor, strong or weak, morally admirable or morally contemptible, and regardless of the race or religion of those victims – would the impartial principle of justice, as expressed in the Law of Equal Freedom, be able to take root and thrive. And this moral progress, Spencer concluded, would take a long time.

Meanwhile, every effort should be made to teach the principles of liberty. Such ideas, even if they cannot, by themselves, bring about a free society, might alert enough people to the dangers of government so as to slow its growth. This is something, even if it is not everything.

I shall postpone a discussion of the sentiment of justice until a later essay in this series. The remainder of this essay is devoted to exploring some of Spencer’s ideas about the intellectual obstacles that make teaching and explaining ideas about liberty especially difficult. I cannot think of a libertarian, past or present, who discussed these problems as thoroughly, or who confronted them as candidly, as did Herbert Spencer.

Modern libertarians, including those who disagree with his pessimistic outlook, will readily identify with the problems discussed by Spencer. Although the political conditions in Victorian England obviously differed from those of the modern era, Spencer was never satisfied with focusing on concrete particulars. Endowed with a remarkable ability to isolate fundamental problems and principles that transcend time and place, Spencer discussed a number of key issues that apply as much to our own time as they did to his own.

Let’s begin with this passage from “The New Toryism” (1884):

You cannot touch or see a political institution: it can be known only by an effort of constructive imagination. Neither can you apprehend by physical perception a political measure: this no less requires a process of mental representation by which its elements are put together in thought, and the essential nature of the combination conceived.  

This observation about the abstract nature of institutions, which is remarkably similar to some points that F.A. Hayek made in The Counter-Revolution of Science, was the foundation of Spencer’s argument that most people simply do not understand the long-term causal effects of political intervention in social and economic affairs. And this led Spencer to a number of corollary observations about the obstacles to achieving a free society.  

Consider Spencer’s article “Political Fetichism” (1865). Spencer begins by noting a primitive religious practice that was scoffed at by Europeans, namely, molding a god out of clay and then expecting this idol to have magical powers not possessed by the clay itself.

However much sophisticated Europeans prided themselves on their superiority to primitive cultures, they entertained similar superstitions in the realm of politics. Why should supposedly enlightened people wonder at the superstitions of primitive minds, Spencer asked, when they hold beliefs that are equally superstitious, if not quite as crude?  After all, many people invest the institution known as “government” with wondrous powers.  Like the molders of clay gods, they expect government to possess “powers or properties quite different from those it had before it was molded.” Spencer continues by calling attention to a problem that has surely frustrated every modern libertarian:

The parallelism is still more conspicuous between the persistency of faith in the two cases, notwithstanding perpetual disappointments. It is difficult to perceive how graven images, that have been thrashed for not responding to their worshipper’s desires, should still be reverenced and petitioned; but the difficulty of conceiving this is diminished when we remember how, in their turns, all the idols in our political pantheon undergo castigations for failing to do what was expected of them, and are nevertheless daily looked up to in the trustful hope that future prayers will be answered. The stupidity, the slowness, the perversity, the dishonesty of officialism, in one or other of its embodiments, are demonstrated afresh in almost every newspaper that issues. Probably half the leading articles written have for texts some absurd official blunder, some exasperating official delay, some astounding official corruption, some gross official injustice, some incredible official extravagance. And yet these whippings, in which balked expectation continually vents itself, are immediately followed by renewed faith: the benefits that have not come are still hoped for, and prayers for others are put up…. [T]here are continually proposed new State-machines of the same type as the old. This inexhaustible credulity is counted on by men of the widest political experience.

Political superstitions were a recurring theme in Spencer’s writings. For example, his essay “The Great Political Superstition” (1884) begins:

The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.

Spencer continues:

It is curious how commonly men continue to hold in fact, doctrines which they have rejected in name – retaining the substance after they have abandoned the form….The tacitly-asserted doctrine, common to Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, that governmental authority is unlimited, dates back to times when the law-giver was supposed to have a warrant from God; and it survives still, though the belief that the law-giver has God’s warrant has died out. “Oh, an Act of Parliament can do anything,” is the reply made to a citizen who questions the legitimacy of some arbitrary State-interference; and the citizen stands paralysed. It does not occur to him to ask the how, and the when, and the whence, of this asserted omnipotence bounded only by physical impossibilities.

We see, in the passages quoted above, two features of Spencer’s interest in political superstitions. The first is the irrational belief in the competence of governments; the second is the irrational belief in the moral authority of governments.

Spencer dissected both of these superstitions ruthlessly and in detail. But despite his best efforts, he seems never to have believed that these fictitious beliefs could be defeated in the foreseeable future.

According to Spencer, most people are too ignorant to understand the detrimental long-term consequences of government intervention, so they will continue to embrace the superstition that a government can accomplish virtually anything, given the requisite political will and despite one failure after another. Experience counts for nothing here, because to understand the abstract nature of political institutions and their causal effects on social and economic interaction requires a level of conceptual ability that exceeds the intellectual powers of most people.

In addition, most people, lacking a sense of justice and hoping to gain from the system of political coercion known as “government,” will gladly surrender their moral autonomy and submit to a political authority in exchange for a mess of porridge.

This pessimistic outlook on both intellectual and moral fronts led to one of the most significant and controversial changes in Spencer’s political beliefs. From a champion of complete suffrage, including female suffrage, early in his career, Spencer became so disillusioned with political reforms that he came to view democracy itself as a serious threat to a free society.

Spencer even criticized American democracy, because many Americans believed that “smart people” in government can do whatever they set out to do. Spencer, who was blunt if he was anything, was not reluctant to use words like “stupidity” when describing these and similar beliefs.

To be continued….

In An Autobiography, Herbert Spencer commented on his “political opinions at the age of 60, considered in contrast with those I held in early days.” Spencer asked: “Have my ideas been modified by the conservatism of advancing years, or by the wider knowledge acquired? or have both operated in causing the change from a sanguine view to a desponding view?”

Spencer continued by saying that “while I have not relinquished my ideal of the future, I have come to see that its realization is far more remote than I had supposed.”

The indignation against wrong, the hopefulness of youth, and the lack of experience, had joined in me, as they do in many, to produce eagerness for political re-organization, and the belief that it needed only to establish a form of government theoretically more equitable to remedy the evils under which society suffered. Hence my juvenile radicalism.

By “juvenile radicalism,” Spencer primarily meant his political views during his early and mid-twenties, as expressed in The Proper Sphere of Government (1842). By the time Social Statics was published in December 1850 (the first edition by John Chapman gives the year as 1851), the opinions of a thirty-year-old Spencer had already begun to change.

I had come to see that institutions are dependent on character; and, however changed in their superficial aspects, cannot be changed in their essential natures faster than character changes. It had become manifest to me that men are rational beings but in a very limited sense; that conduct results from desire, to the gratification of which reason serves but as a guide….

Spencer elaborated on this theme in many different books and articles, in which he denied “the curative effects of teaching.” It is plainly wrong to say that “when men are taught what is right, they will do what is right.” Humans are largely motivated by their moral habits (or “sentiments”), so the effort to improve moral habits through the teaching of moral truths reverses cause and effect. “Were it fully understood that the emotions are the masters and the intellect the servant, it would be seen that little can be done by improving the servant while the masters remain unimproved.”

By all means let us have a tracing down of morals to the laws of life, individual and social, and a continual emphasizing of the truths reached; but it must go along with the understanding that only as the discipline of a peaceful social life slowly remoulds men’s natures, will appreciable effects be produced.

Spencer frequently made the same point by saying that human character, not abstract beliefs, determines the course of social change. Any ethical theory worth its salt must take the factors that influence character seriously into account.

Spencer’s reference to remolding human nature brings us to some difficult and troublesome features of his overall approach. It is always easier, not to mention more pleasant, to explain ideas with which one fundamentally agrees, but I have never agreed with certain aspects of Spencer’s fundamental approach to philosophy and social theory. So let’s get this over with.

Although Spencer never expressly identified himself as a determinist—he tended to shy away from the traditional controversy over free will, largely because he believed that the ultimate nature of reality is “unknowable”—he was a determinist by any reasonable standard. Spencer’s social determinism is evident in many of his sociological writings, and it caused significant problems when he shifted roles from sociologist to moral philosopher.

For example, when Spencer discussed the early stages of social evolution, he would sometimes note the beneficial, if unintended, consequences of various wars and conquests. He regarded such activities as barbaric, of course, but he stressed that barbaric actions are normal in barbaric societies; it would unreasonable to expect anything more.

Consider the point at which conquering tribes, after realizing that more loot could be gotten from the living than from the dead, stopped slaughtering their victims and began enslaving them instead. According to Spencer, this represented an advance in social evolution, as did the later transition from slavery to serfdom.

So how did Spencer, qua moral philosopher, characterize these developments? This is where things get a bit tricky. According to what Spencer called “absolute ethics,” slavery and serfdom are wrong, period. But according to Spencer’s notion of “relative ethics,” such developments were less evil and therefore relatively good when compared to the stages that preceded them.

As Spencer saw the matter, slavery, serfdom, and similar developments were necessary stages in the progress to free societies—or regimes of contract, as he sometime called them. (Spencer borrowed this expression, along with “regimes of status,” from the legal historian Sir Henry Sumner Maine.) When dealing with militant, warlike cultures, it would be absurd to expect free societies to spring up out of nowhere, without the necessary libertarian sentiments and ideas to serve as foundations.

Spencer believed that the beneficial effects of war and conflict were a thing of the past. Europe and America had undergone crucial transitions from “militant” forms of social organization (“regimes of status”) to “industrial” forms of social organizations (“regimes of contract”). The “compulsory co-operation” that characterizes militant societies had largely been replaced by the “voluntary co-operation” of industrial societies. (When Spencer observed later retrogressions into militant forms of society, he called this disturbing trend the “rebarbarization of Europe.”)

Spencer used the militant and industrial forms of social organization as ideal types, or analytic models, while acknowledging that no society has ever embodied a pure type. But he also believed that the attainment of a purely voluntary society is inevitable, given the deterministic forces of social evolution.

Human nature, according to Spencer, is indefinitely variable and modifiable, so as people adapt to the requirements of voluntary social interaction, their sentiments will change accordingly. In the final stage of social evolution not only will individuals desire justice for themselves but most people will also desire equal justice for others, so they will favor restricting governmental powers to the protection and enforcement of individual rights. (I qualified this statement with “most” because Spencer typically spoke of the “average” sentiments in a given society, while noting possible exceptions.)

In Social Statics, Spencer stipulated that the principles of justice therein explained apply only to the “straight man,” i.e., only to people who have attained the ultimate stage of moral evolution. It is at this stage, and at this stage only, that Spencer’s Law of Equal Freedom will become fully applicable: “Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”

This is why Spencer titled his book Social Statics. His principles of perfect justice were meant to apply to the static, or stationary, stage of social evolution—the ultimate stage in which we will find morally perfect human beings. His principles of justice were not meant to apply, at least not in a strict sense, to the dynamic transition from an imperfect to a perfect society. In the perfect society, in which the sentiments of (most) individuals will correspond to the Law of Equal Freedom, that law will function as a principle of equilibrium and thereby prevent freedom from degenerating into statism.

Consider a chapter in Social Statics, “The Right to Ignore the State,” that has been admired by generations of libertarians. Many libertarians believe that Spencer’s omission of this remarkable chapter from a later edition of Social Statics is the best indicator of his retreat from radicalism in later life. That this is a misleading interpretation becomes clear if we read the last section of this chapter. This section begins:

The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law [i.e., the Law of Equal Freedom] and an imperfect [social] state. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its administration would be productive of anarchy. In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and inevitable.

Although the inevitable progress of man’s moral sentiments “will eventually render government impossible,” it is also true that “the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless.” Spencer concludes:

Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the state will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it.

Thus, as with other matters discussed in Social Statics, the right of individuals to secede from the jurisdiction of a government will become operative only at the ultimate stage of social and moral evolution. This brings us to an obvious question: What is the point of Spencer’s Law of Equal Freedom, if it cannot be applied to one’s current social condition?

Spencer addressed this question not long after the publication of Social Statics, and he repeated the same point at various other times. The absolute principles of justice, he said, are ultimate goals that function as moral beacons. They guide us in the complex world of political activities by highlighting the long-range goals we wish to achieve—goals that are too often sacrificed for apparent short-term benefits.

If we should keep the demands of absolute justice in mind when evaluating a particular political proposal, we should also understand that a perfectly free society, though inevitable (according to Spencer), lies somewhere in the future. It is absurd to demand that the principles of absolute justice be implemented in the current, imperfect state of society. This is absurd because it is impossible, and it is impossible because our contemporaries have adapted themselves to the imperfect social state in which we currently find ourselves. Consequently, their imperfect sentiments will not motivate them to support the Law of Equal Freedom, however much we may attempt to teach them about the principles of absolute justice.

We may therefore preach to others as much as we like about the value of liberty, but, with the exception of a relative handful of people who understand the importance of ideas, our preaching will fall on deaf ears. Not until freedom has progressed to the point where people can experience the beneficial or harmful effects of their own actions, while understanding that government will neither deprive them of the fruits of their labor nor save them from the folly of their own voluntary decisions, will people fully adapt to the conditions of freedom and develop the moral sentiments necessary to sustain a free society.

All this will take time, of course—and time was the factor that essentially differentiated the early optimistic Spencer from the later pessimistic Spencer. As Spencer put it at the conclusion of the discussion (in An Autobiography) that I quoted at the beginning of this essay:

Human nature must be much better than it at present is before a much higher civilization can be established. Though I believe that, in the words of the song, “”there’s a good time coming,” it now seems to me that the “good time” is very far distant.

Some readers may feel frustrated by Spencer’s theory of social progress—and, if so, I empathize with them — but such is the nature of the beast. The problems in his theory will be apparent to attentive readers. (For instance, why would people with inappropriate moral sentiments pay any more attention to the Law of Equal Freedom as an ultimate goal than they would as a proximate standard of behavior?) I noted earlier the tension between Spencer qua deterministic sociologist and Spencer qua moral philosopher. There is no credible way to resolve this tension—and I say this after decades of searching for a resolution.

There is a ray of light in the theoretical darkness. Like many first-rate minds, Spencer’s common sense frequently enabled him to overcome the logical pitfalls of his theoretical system by stepping over them, as if such pitfalls did not exist.

In other words, a great deal that Spencer had to say about the political world and the prospects for liberty can be abstracted from his philosophical and sociological principles and applied to problems that libertarians face today. I shall discuss these more useful points in the remainder of this series.

To be continued….

“It has been my singular fortune (or fate) to have read through the whole of Spencer’s works twice at an interval of fifteen years, and each time in the midst of a great war.” So wrote Hugh Elliot in his Introduction to Herbert Spencer (1917), one of the better early works on Spencer’s life and ideas.

Elliot first read Spencer’s books while serving with the British army during the second Boer War (1899-1902), a time when he frequently “had little other baggage than a toothbrush and a volume of The Principles of Psychology.” Elliot—who was familiar with the anti-war views of Richard Cobden, John Bright, and other laissez-faire liberals—continued:

There exists in the English language no more trenchant indictment of war and militarism than is contained in The Study of Sociology. Yet it was my lot to read that work many miles from any inhabited town, in momentary expectation of an attack, and with revolver ready loaded in case of sudden need.

It was during this period that Elliot became a “dogmatic disciple” of Spencer. But after the Boer War, as Elliot watched English politics drift with a seeming inevitability toward socialism, he became apathetic, “for the realization of Spencer’s theories appeared to be hopeless.”

The onset of the Great War (WWI) roused Elliot from his political lethargy. Although Elliot does not mention the story, his reaction was similar to that of a liberal MP who, after Britain had declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, said, with tears in his eyes: “Liberalism is dead.”

Again and again, throughout many years and in many different books and articles, Spencer argued that war is the single greatest threat to individual freedom. As Elliot (who was writing while WWI was in full swing) observed, if England was drifting toward socialistic policies before August 1914, this slow current quickly became a torrent after the war began:

We are no longer drifting slowly along the placid stream of social reform, increasing month by month our stock of legislative enactments, and adding year by year to the powers of the Government over the individual. Circumstances have driven us headlong to a consummation which in many spheres touches the limit to which previous legislation was gradually progressing. In a few months the power of the State has increased to a degree which it could scarcely have attained in as many years of social reform. If the State formerly was by degrees asserting its authority over individuals, if it was always enlarging its claim to control their activities and to take their incomes as taxation; it has now overtly proclaimed its complete authority over the persons and incomes of every individual subject to its control. Doubtless it has done so by necessity; but here we have a definite and avowed social policy, which is exceedingly likely to be continued long after the temporary necessity has lapsed.

It was during the Great War that Hugh Elliot read Spencer’s voluminous works for the second time. And though he now had some ideological disagreements, including with some of “Spencer’s furious declamations against warlike and military activities,” Elliot contended that Spencer was the greatest critic of militarism and war that England had ever produced. If “England had followed Spencer, this war could never have occurred.”

Europe is now drenched in blood; its wealth and prosperity are fast being drained away. The spirit of Treitschke has triumphed over the spirit of Spencer….And while reading Spencer again, I have reached the conclusion that, notwithstanding his errors, his spirit was sound and true. It is useless now to sneer at liberty as a discredited doctrine. Europe may have abandoned it; but see the result!

Spencer, according to Elliot, “long ago foresaw the goal of European policy, and contended with all his might to stem the tide before it was too late.” But Spencer was out of fashion in England by the turn of the century; the political tendencies in the years preceding the Great War “were all hostile to Spencer’s teaching.” Nevertheless, “it seems to be clear that the social policy against which Spencer fought is now bankrupt. It has failed, and its failure threatens to ruin Europe for a generation.”

Earlier I quoted Elliot’s remark, “There exists in the English language no more trenchant indictment of war and militarism than is contained in The Study of Sociology.” This is an interesting observation if placed in a modern context, because few contemporary libertarians are familiar with Spencer’s works on sociology. To the extent they know of Spencer’s critiques of war, militarism, and imperialism, they learned of these things either second-hand or through reading Spencer’s more popular articles. Yet it is in Spencer’s technical writings on sociology that we find his most formidable arguments about the antagonism between militarism and war, on the one hand, and individual freedom and social progress, on the other hand. (In contrast to Elliot, I would rank the second and third volumes of Spencer’s masterpiece, The Principles of Sociology, far above his more general text, The Study of Sociology.)

I will explore Spencer’s technical theories, such as his celebrated contrast between the “militant’ and “industrial” forms of social organization, in a later essay. These theories are essential to understanding Spencer’s later pessimism and his uncanny predictions about the statism and war that would dominate Europe during much of the twentieth century. For the remainder of this essay, however, I will focus on Spencer’s opposition to the Boer War—his last great cause.

As Hugh Elliot read Spencer’s works while “on active service on the South African veldt,” he could hardly have avoided reading some of Spencer’s trenchant and bitter criticisms of the Boer War. As Spencer’s official biographer, David Duncan, noted in The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (p. 449):

Probably no political event in the whole course of his life moved him so profoundly. “I am ashamed of my country,” was his frequent remark. Liberals equally with Tories were, in his opinion, responsible for the deplorable condition in which the country had drifted.

Duncan (p. 421) also remarked:

Some time before the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa [Spencer] had denounced the policy that was drifting the country into war. Whatever one’s opinion may be as to the right or the wrong of the war, one must admit that Spencer’s attitude towards it was in complete harmony with the principles he had throughout life professed.

By 1900, an eighty-year-old Spencer had made the final revisions to his formidable ten-volume Synthetic Philosophy—a work of incredible scope that was planned decades earlier and written in spite of severe health problems. Spencer received letters of congratulations from leading intellectuals around the world, and many people expected the old man, who now dubbed himself an “invalid,” to retire from the stress of writing.

But Spencer had one more book to write—a collection of essays that, unlike his earlier anthologies, would include new rather than previously published pieces. Published as Facts and Comments in 1902 (a year before Spencer’s death), this collection expressed ideas that, as Spencer put it, ranged from “relatively trivial” to “some of more interest, and some which I think are important.”

Among the important essays are several that deal with militarism, imperialism, and war—and the Boer War in particular. Spencer’s uncompromising opposition to the Boer War was well-known prior to the publication of Facts and Comments in 1902. Two years earlier, for example, Spencer had published several letters condemning the war, and his opposition brought upon his head the predictable response that he was unpatriotic.

Spencer struck back with a vengeance in Facts and Comments, especially in an essay titled “Patriotism.” This essay begins:

Were any one to call me dishonest or untruthful he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. ‘What, then, have you no love of country?” That is a question not to be answered in a breath.

Although Spencer admired many things about England and English history, there were also “traits, unhappily of late more frequently displayed,” that deserved condemnation from anyone with a serious regard for justice and freedom, such as various pretexts used by British imperialists to wage “desolating” wars.

If because my love of country does not survive these and many other adverse experiences I am called unpatriotic—well, I am content to be so called.

One striking paragraph in particular incurred the wrath of English public opinion; even The Liberty Review—a periodical of the Liberty and Property Defense League, many of whose members idolized Spencer—attacked it. Here is Spencer’s infamous statement:

Some years ago I gave expression to my own feeling—anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called—in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war [1878-80], when, in pursuance of what were thought to be “our interests,” we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenaeum Club a well-known military man—then a captain but now a general—drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety, I astounded him by replying—“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

Spencer was no pacifist. On the contrary, he vigorously defended the right of self-defense and upheld the moral legitimacy of wars that are truly defensive. But if “patriotism” means the unconditional support of one’s government in time of war, regardless of the justice of that war, then Spencer wanted no part of it. “To me the cry—‘Our country, right or wrong!’ seems detestable.” Patriotism in this sense is a “sentiment…of the lowest.”

Throughout Facts and Comments, we find criticisms of the English press, which had falsified information in an effort to muster support for the Boer War. The following comment (from the article “State-Education,” which is largely a critique of the war) is typical: “Day by day the reports of the South African war have been full of fictions, exaggerations, garbling; much has been falsified, much suppressed.”

Spencer was especially critical of the how the London Times reported on the war. The Times retaliated after Spencer’s death in 1903 with a highly critical obituary.

To be continued….

In my last essay, I discussed the recollections of Beatrice Webb (formerly Beatrice Potter) about Herbert Spencer’s last days in 1903. She noted “his pessimism about the world,” calling it a “sad ending.” Beatrice continued:

Indeed, the last twenty years have been sad—poisoned by morphia and self-absorption, and contorted by that strangely crude vision of all human life as a series of hard bargains.

Although Beatrice called Spencer a “single-hearted seeker after truth,” she also spoke of his “superficial egotism—brought about, I believe, by poisonous food and drugs.”

I have no idea what Beatrice meant by “poisonous food,” but “drugs” was another reference to the “morphia” (an opium derivative) that Spencer used to combat his severe insomnia. Opium, Beatrice believed, caused Spencer to deteriorate mentally, a condition that contributed to the pessimism of his later years.

Spencer (as we shall see) discussed his opium use in An Autobiography, a two-volume work published shortly after his death. But rumors were afoot before then. The great freethought scholar J.M. Robertson once remarked that “Spencer has not been publicly gossiped about…and what one has heard privately it is not now in good taste to publish.” The underground gossip that Robertson refused to identify almost certainly pertained to Spencer’s use of opium.

How seriously should we take Beatrice’s claim that Spencer’s alleged opium addiction contributed to his pessimism in later years? Not seriously at all, I contend—and in this essay I will explain why. This may seem a peculiar topic, but one advantage of writing my “Excursions” essays is that I get to choose the excursions.

We first need to consider the credibility of Beatrice Webb. Why would an old friend write such things in her diary unless they were grounded in facts?

A careful reading of Beatrice’s diary (much of which she reprinted in My Apprenticeship, the first volume of her autobiography) reveals a curious ambivalence toward Herbert Spencer. Consider her remark, quoted above, that Spencer viewed life as “a series of hard bargains.” This is an oddball characterization, to say the least. There are other indications that Beatrice never fully understood many of Spencer’s ideas, much less his approach to life.

Beatrice could write in a condescending way about Spencer. Imbued with the over-romanticized attitude of many girls and young women in Victorian England, she failed to appreciate how the life of a dedicated intellectual could be anything but emotionally barren. The following entry, written in 1881 (when Beatrice was twenty-three), is typical.

Spent the whole day with Herbert Spencer at private view. He worked out, poor man, a sad destiny for one whose whole life has been his work. There is something pathetic in the isolation of his mind, a sort of spider-like existence; sitting alone in the centre of his theoretical web, catching facts, and weaving them again into theory. It is sorrowful when the individual is lost in the work—when he has been set apart to fulfill some function, and then when working days are past left as the husk, the living kernel of which has been given to the world.

Beatrice was raised by a mother who had a low opinion of her intellectual abilities and by a father who was often away from home. The encouragement and visibility she got came almost entirely from Spencer: “As a little child he was perhaps the only person who persistently cared for me—or rather as one who was worthy of being trained and looked after.”

This was the source of the affection and loyalty that Beatrice felt for Spencer. Spencer instilled in Beatrice an appreciation of nature, but he never insisted that she read his books. (Pressuring children to read books ran contrary to Spencer’s theory of education.) When Beatrice got around to reading Spencer at age twenty, she found herself frustrated by his “generalizations.”

Beatrice longed for the approval of Spencer, but, according to her own account, she felt intellectually insignificant in the presence of his genius, as if none of her work would ever be worthwhile by comparison. Although she embraced Spencer’s libertarian views as a young woman, she eventually rebelled. And when Beatrice rebelled, she rebelled with a vengeance,

Beatrice’s fall from laissez-faire began to evolve while she was assisting Charles Booth in the mid-1880s, a project that resulted in the first two volumes of Booth’s classic work, Life and Labour of the People of London. That her later conversion to socialism was attended with emotional turmoil is evident from her remark: “I shook myself completely free from laisser-faire bias—in fact, I suffered from a somewhat violent reaction from it.”

Another factor may have played an important role in widening the intellectual chasm between Beatrice and Spencer. Although Beatrice, like Spencer, called herself an “agnostic,” she became disgusted by what she mischaracterized as Spencer’s “materialism”—another indication that she did not understand Spencer’s philosophy very well. In any case, Beatrice longed “to listen to voices in the great Unknown, to open my consciousness to the non-material world—to prayer.”

In early 1892, after the announcement of her engagement to Sidney Webb, Beatrice paid a visit to Spencer. Although “affectionate and cordial” to Beatrice, Spencer was obviously displeased. “I cannot congratulate you—that would be insincere,” he told her. If Beatrice was hoping to receive Spencer’s blessing, she was sorely disappointed.

After many years of puzzling over the complicated relationship between Beatrice and Spencer, I have concluded that Beatrice’s understanding of Spencer did not run very deep. She had sympathy in abundance but little empathy. They were different kinds of people with different ways of looking at the world. The same political developments that horrified Spencer delighted Beatrice, after her conversion to socialism.

Unable to appreciate the depth of Spencer’s intellectual passion, and largely unaware of the philosophical, cultural, and political reasons for his later pessimism, Beatrice resorted to the simplistic and, by implication, insulting explanation of “poisonous” drugs. It seems never to have occurred to Beatrice that Spencer had good reasons for becoming pessimistic about the future.

Before we turn to Spencer’s side of the story, let’s take a brief look at the nervous disorder that plagued him for the last fifty years of his life.

Spencer’s affliction was called neurasthenia. A leading authority on neurasthenia, Dr. George M. Beard, frequently mentioned Spencer—as we see in his 1884 book on the subject. Beard observed:

Much of the world’s best work has been done by neurasthenics. George Eliot, Darwin, Heine, Spencer, Edwards, Kant, Bacon, Montaigne, Jourbert, Rousseau, Schiller, illustrate the possibility of not only living, but of doing original work on a small capital of reserve force.

After experiencing a nervous breakdown at thirty-five, while writing The Principles of Psychology, Spencer suffered from acute insomnia for the rest of his life. There were other consequences as well. Finding that he sometimes could not read or write for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch, Spencer began the practice of dictating his letters to a secretary. After 1860 Spencer wrote all his articles and books in this manner.

When dictation proved difficult for Spencer, he resorted to unusual methods. For example, he would a row a boat for fifteen minutes, pause to dictate to a secretary, row for another fifteen minutes, and so on. Spencer dictated an especially difficult part of a book while taking breaks from lawn tennis. (See the charming 1903 account by George Iles, How Herbert Spencer Works and Lives. )

Spencer hired researchers to locate and clip many of the factual details that pepper his writings on sociology and other matters. Spencer read newspapers, or he had newspapers read to him, but he otherwise read relatively little. Attempts to work in the evening got him so wound-up that he could not sleep, so he usually worked in the morning. Spencer endured long periods, sometimes months at a time, when he could not work at all.

When we take these personal difficulties into account Spencer’s prodigious output almost defies belief. We are here dealing with more than a first-rate mind; we are also dealing with a man of enormous determination.

Spencer contributed substantially to the Victorian interest in nervous fatigue. Especially influential was a talk he gave during his visit to America in 1882.

Spencer’s trip was supposed to be a vacation. He refused to go on a lecture tour, even when offered a large amount per lecture. To give lectures “would be nothing more than a show, and I absolutely decline to make myself a show.” Spencer repeatedly declined such offers: “I have a faculty of saying No, and…when I say No I mean No.”

Spencer finally agreed to attend a dinner in his honor and give a brief talk. Held at Delmonico’s in New York City on November 9, 1882, and attended by leading intellectuals and businessmen, the dinner featured a number of prominent speakers who praised Spencer to the skies.

All this praise made Spencer uncomfortable. The speeches “were somewhat trying to sit through,” he later remarked. We can only imagine what the distinguished audience expected Spencer to say when his turn came to speak—perhaps they expected him to praise America or to defend free trade—but no one expected what the eccentric Englishman gave them.

Spencer’s speech criticized Americans for working too hard. After noting his own “disturbed health” and “disordered nervous system,” Spencer advised Americans not to make the same mistake he had made years earlier. “I am going to find fault with you,” Spencer warned his admirers.

[I]n every circle [in America] I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to stress of business, or named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork, or had been permanently incapacitated, or had wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health. I do but echo the opinion of all the observant persons I have spoken to, that immense injury is being done by this high-pressure life….Exclusive devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to please; and when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its sole interest—the interest in business.

In a striking aphorism, Spencer said: “Life is not for learning, nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.” (Since few people read Spencer any longer, it is scarcely surprising that his talent for aphorisms is unappreciated. Such was not the case in his own day.) Spencer concluded:

In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the “gospel of work.” It is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.

Published as The Gospel of Relaxation, Spencer’s speech created a sensation and inspired a good deal of thinking and writing about the value of leisure. Thus did this celebrated champion of free-market capitalism play a major role in undermining the traditional notion of the Protestant work ethic.

We should keep in mind that all this happened around the same time that Beatrice Potter was complaining that Spencer was “lost in his work” and living “a spider-like existence.” There was obviously a good deal about Spencer that Beatrice did not understand, however much she cared about him. And this brings us, full circle, back to Beatrice’s remarks about a man who had supposedly poisoned himself with opium.

In An Autobiography, Spencer denied that opium is the demon of popular lore. In an even-handed treatment that was almost as rare in Spencer’s time as it is in our own, he noted that there is scarcely a drug that will not produce different effects in different people. “Certainly we have familiar proof that this is the case with alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco and opium.” Spencer continued:

This mention of opium reminds me that I had for some time previously made occasional use of it—commonly under the form of morphia. With me sleep brought sleep and wakefulness was habitually followed by more wakefulness; so that after a series of specially bad nights it had been my practice to break the morbid habit, and re-establish the periodicity of sleep by artificial means. Sometimes it was weeks, sometimes months, before I again had recourse to one or other preparation of opium. That the average result was beneficial is an opinion which I here express, because there is, I think, an undue fear of opium; both in the minds of medical men and in those of men at large. Every medicinal agent is liable to abuse; and when it has been greatly abused there arises a reaction, which goes almost to the extent of forbidding its use. In respect of opium a re-reaction is needed.

Spencer’s Autobiography is one of the most candid, introspective, and self-critical autobiographies ever written. I know of no good reason to doubt Spencer’s account, which is far less sensational than the image of drug-addicted Spencer, as depicted by Beatrice and, regrettably, those modern historians who have taken her account at face value.

Spencer discussed his transition from optimism to pessimism, stage by stage, in considerable detail. He identified the errors in his earlier thinking, including his naiveté about politics and his overestimation of the influence of reason in human affairs, and he traced some ominous political developments in England that he did not fully appreciate when he wrote The Proper Sphere of Government (1842) and Social Statics (1851). Moreover, as I discussed in my last essay, Spencer predicted the twentieth-century degeneration into statism, war, and military dictatorships with uncanny and chilling accuracy.

To overlook all this and attribute Spencer’s gloomy outlook to a disordered mental state caused by drugs is, in a word, preposterous.

To be continued….

Herbert Spencer died on December 8, 1903, at age 83. He had been gravely ill for some time. Six months earlier, Beatrice—a close friend he had mentored in her childhood—wrote in her diary:

A pathetic three days at Brighton just before we left London. A note from Herbert Spencer’s secretary one morning, saying that the old man was very ill, made me take the train to Brighton—I did not like the thought that he should be nearing death without an old friend by his side. I found the devoted secretary and kindly girl housekeeper much upset; the doctor said he would not last long, and he was so self-willed about his treatment that it was almost impossible to keep him fairly comfortable.

Beatrice noted that the pessimism of Spencer’s later years had taken its toll. Spencer felt that his sixty-year struggle for freedom had accomplished nothing.

The poor old man looked as if he were leaving this world: and what pained me was his look of weary discomfort and depression. I kissed him on the forehead and took his hand in mine. He seemed so glad of this mark of affection: “It is good-bye, dear old, or is it young friend,” he said with a slight flicker of a smile; “which word is most appropriate?” And then he seemed anxious to talk. “If pessimism means that you would rather not have lived, then I am a pessimist,” he said in tones of depression.

Shortly after Spencer’s death, Beatrice wrote in her diary:

My old friend passed peacefully away this morning…. Since I have been back in London this autumn I have been down to Brighton most weeks—last week I was there on Monday, Friday, and Saturday, trying to soften these days of physical discomfort and mental depression by affectionate sympathy. “My oldest and dearest friend,” he has called me on these last visits…. You and I have the same ends,” he repeated again; “it is only in methods that we differ.” On Saturday he was quite conscious and bade me an affectionate farewell—but he clearly wanted to be let alone to die and not troubled with further mental effort.

Spencer died the following Tuesday, after days of lapsing in and out of consciousness. Beatrice called “his pessimism about the world” a “sad ending.”

Beatrice was born in 1858, the second youngest among the eight daughters of Richard and Laurencia Potter. Spencer met the Potters during the 1840s, while he was in his twenties, and they became close friends. The Potter household served as a second home for Spencer, and he became especially close to Beatrice Potter. Beatrice called Spencer “the oldest and most intimate friend of the family.”

Although Beatrice was regarded by her mother as the least intelligent of the Potter girls, Spencer saw in Beatrice great intelligence and potential. They took long nature walks together, during which Spencer encouraged her to discover things for herself instead of from books—a type of education for which Spencer would become famous.

So high was Spencer’s regard for Beatrice that he later appointed her executor of his literary estate, which meant she would control his manuscripts, letters, and unpublished papers. Spencer probably hoped that Beatrice would use these papers to write his biography and carry on his work, but none of this came to pass.

In what is surely one of the most ironic twists of fate in libertarian history, Beatrice married Sidney Webb in July 1892, after which the team of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, along with George Bernard Shaw and other prominent English intellectuals, went on to lead the movement known as Fabian Socialism. So complete was Beatrice’s transformation from libertarianism to socialism that she and Sidney, after visiting the Soviet Union in 1932, co-authored two books defending the Stalinist regime. Spencer would have been horrified.

We don’t know much about Spencer’s reaction to the transformation of Beatrice, but it surely must have contributed to his pessimism. For here, in a person he regarded as his potential intellectual heir, was the personification of his shattered hopes and dreams for the future of liberty.

Spencer met with Beatrice shortly after her marriage. They agreed that it was no longer appropriate for her to serve as his literary executor, but they remained friends. Indeed, Beatrice was one of the few people that Spencer specifically asked to see as he lay dying. The affection between teacher and student was still there, as indicated by the passages from Beatrice’s diary, quoted above. We can only surmise the depth of Spencer’s disappointment, since he appears never to have discussed it with anyone.

Spencer was a world-class intellectual whose writings were translated into every major European language, into Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and the chief languages of India, and possibly (according to his official biographer, David Duncan) even into Mohawk. Although known to modern libertarians primarily for his libertarian classic, Social Statics (1850), Spencer was a founding father of sociology and a major force in science and education. One can still see his name engraved on the education building at Stanford University.

Widely read and admired throughout the world, Spencer was especially popular in America. Indeed, his American admirer E.L. Youmans founded The Popular Science Monthly primarily as a vehicle to popularize Spencer’s ideas—as we see in the premiere issue (May 1872), which features the first installment of a serialization of Spencer’s important book, The Study of Sociology.

After Spencer’s death in 1903, many famous intellectuals, such as William James, wrote articles about him. Some of these writers knew Spencer and some did not, some praised Spencer and some did not, but all were fascinated by this eccentric genius who claimed that he never read much because he preferred to think things through for himself, who loved to fish and roam the beautiful countryside of Scotland, who was adept at billiards, and who suffered from a nervous disorder so severe that he frequently could not concentrate or write for more than an hour or so at a time. Amusing stories about Spencer abound, such as his practice of inserting earplugs without warning when a conversation got on his nerves.

Here was a man, though home-schooled and self-educated, who was offered honorary degrees and other awards from leading universities and dozens of other organizations throughout the world. He turned down all of them, largely because he thought such honors were based on how famous one is, not on the quality of one’s work.

During Spencer’s early years, as he struggled to make a living as a writer and market intellectual, no universities offered to help. Offers of financial assistance came instead from J.S. Mill, T.H. Huxley, and other friends, so Spencer’s attitude to university honors in later life, after he was famous and didn’t need any assistance, was essentially this: Where the hell were you when I could have used your help?

When this remarkable man moved from an early optimism (during the 1840s and 50s) to an extreme pessimism (beginning roughly in the 1880s) about the prospects for individual liberty, when he predicted the rise of militarism and total war in the twentieth century and the political centralization and regimentation that such militarism would bring in its wake, he let it be known that classical liberalism was dead for the foreseeable future. And he was right.

As Spencer wrote to an American correspondent in 1898:

Now that the white savages of Europe are overcoming the dark savages everywhere—now that the European nations are vying with one another in political burglaries—now that we have entered upon an era of social cannibalism in which the strong nations are devouring the weaker—now that national interests, national prestige, pluck, and so forth are alone thought of, and equity has utterly dropped out of thought, while rectitude is scorned as “unctuous,” it is useless to resist the wave of barbarism. There is a bad time coming, and civilized mankind will (morally) be uncivilized before civilization can again advance….

The universal aggressiveness and universal culture of blood-thirst will bring back military despotism, out of which after many generations partial freedom may again emerge.

Spencer was keenly aware of the inextricable relationship between militarism and statism, and he agreed with the observation of Sidney Webb (the Fabian socialist I mentioned earlier) that unrestricted democracy will lead inevitably to socialism. As Spencer wrote to a friend in 1892:

I quite agree with you in your belief that little or nothing can be done to check the increasing drift toward socialism, unless the ratepayers can be roused to action. But unhappily the English people, and perhaps more than others the middle classes, are too stupid to generalize. A special matter immediately affecting them … may rouse them to action, but they cannot be roused to action by enforcing upon them a general policy. The results are too remote and vague for their feeble imaginations.

A discussion of Spencer’s transition from optimism to pessimism has considerable value beyond its historical interest. Spencer’s analyses of the intellectual, cultural, and political conditions that lead to statism and socialism are more subtle and profound than even many libertarians appreciate, and the modern reader can learn a great deal from them.

This is why I am devoting a series to the pessimism of Herbert Spencer. I do so not to depress my readers but to enlighten them through the ideas of one of the most brilliant libertarian thinkers in history.

To be continued…