VI.
HERBERT SPENCER'S SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
When the study of Anthropology—i.e., tho study of the physiological evolution of man and the growth of his institutions and religious beliefs—began to be carried on with the methods that are applied in all other natural sciences, it became possible at last to delineate in its essential outlines the history of mankind, and to do away with metaphysics which had obstructed till then the study of history, just as Biblical tradition had obstructed the progress of geology.
One might have thought, therefore, that when Herbert Spencer undertook in his turn tho construction of a synthetic philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century, he would have done so without falling into the errors that had characterised the "Positive Politics" of Auguste Comte. And yet, even though Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" is a great step in advance (it does not lead to a religion or to a new form of worship), yet in its sociological part it contains fallacies quite as misleading as those that were embodied in Comte's Positive philosophy.
The fact is, that when Spencer came to the psychology of societies (after having admirably examined the substance of our knowledge in physical sciences, biology, and psychology), he did not remain faithful to his rigorous scientific method, and did not dare to face the consequences to which such a method would have brought him. Thus, to take one single example, Spencer fully recognised that land should never be private property; because the owner of the soil, profiting by his right to raise the land-rent, may hinder his fellow men from obtaining from the soil all they could get out of it by means of intensive culture; or, he may keep the land uncultivated, waiting till its value be raised by the work of other people around him. Spencer readily recognised that such a system is noxious to society and full of dangers. But while recognising this as regards land, he did not venture to use the same arguments as regards other accumulated riches, such as mines or docks, not to mention workshops and factories. In natural sciences he did not hesitate to come to opinions absolutely contrary to those that had been maintained for centuries under the influence of religious beliefs. But here he had not the courage to accept the logical conclusions of his own reasonings.
