His life was par excellence in his writings; and a true biography of Spencer must consist chiefly of an account of his works. He was one of those authors of whom it may be most truly said that his works were much greater than himself; and all the best of him will be found in his philosophy. His personality, outside his works, was meagre and petty.
We must certainly discard the whole dogmatism and formulary of Spencer's social philosophy: we cannot force the conclusions of sociology into a few narrow and rigid laws, as Spencer endeavoured to do (pp. 8–9).
Whether one is of the minority or of the majority in estimating the present worth of Spencer's writings, one can scarcely imagine students, for a long time to come, with sufficient detachment from the more urgent problems of the day to dedicate themselves, as men did while the publication was in process, to eager line-upon-line study of everything which Spencer wrote. With the utmost respect for Spencer's services as a path-breaker for positivism, all but the few for whom we have made allowance realize that his chief significance at present is as a factor in the evolution of thought, not as an authority for present thinking. In other words, even those of us who have profited most by following Spencer through his solution of his problems, must be painfully aware that for men now in their formative years Spencer is largely archaeology. That being the case, a sympathetic introduction, with indication of the main positions in the system, and with a plot of the traps that guard those positions, is the most serviceable addition that could be made to Spencerian literature. Mr. Elliot has admirably satisfied these requirements.
For example, after a succinct statement of the general character of Spencer's philosophy the biographer is equally lucid in showing that it was wholly "worked out by the deductive method … the outstanding fact remains that the two great doctrines of his Sociology and Ethics are just the two doctrines which he imbibed with the greatest avidity in his early years as a political agitator" (pp. 84-85). Equally wise is the indication of prematurity in Spencer's insistent division of societies into "militant" and "industrial" (p. 95 ff., cf. p. 162). Again, the author is at his best when elaborating such propositions as: "Spencer's sociology was unfortunately under the immediate and powerful bias of his Ethics. … But Spencer had no historical sense" (p. 101); "We cannot admit that the dogmas of the fifties are the last word in the science of sociology or in the art of ethics. … Liberty should not be a dogma, but should constitute the atmosphere of social and political thought."
Mr. Elliot successfully locates the fatal flaw in the Spencerian method of explaining social evolution. He indicates it by varying the proposition: "Spencer's perennial search for a logical origin blinds him to the truth that the origin is psychological" (p. 168). He applies the same test to the Spencerian ethics: "Man is primarily a being of emotions and feelings; and in that region we must seek explanations of his behaviour" (p. 185).
