SPENCER, Herbert, philosopher and ex ponent of the modern philosophy of evolution: b. Derby, England, 27 April 1820; d. 8 Dec. 1903. His father was a teacher, a Non-Conform ist, who was for years a Wesleyan, but who afterward seceded from that religious body and remained to the end of his life somewhat in different to outward religious forms, although a deeply religious man. The subsequent tend
of Spencer's philosophy was indirectly, but in a very potent way, determined by the education that his father gave him during his childhood and early youth. It was an educa tion that decidedly tended to quicken his inter est in the study of nature, and to develop his powers of independent thought and of inquiry into the nature of things. Furthermore, the Non-Conformist atmosphere in which Spencer grew up strongly tended to cultivate in his mind political liberalism of the type then character istic of many of the most progressive English minds. In 1837 Spencer began the study of en gineering under Mr. Charles Fox, the engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway, then recently constructed. Spencer continued his work in the service of the railway, with some interruptions, until 1841. In 1843 he went to London and engaged in contributing to the va rious periodicals, and in somewhat varied ac tivities of a miscellaneous sort, until 1850. In 1842 he wrote a series of letters to The N on Conformist —a newspaper then recently estab lished as an organ of the Dissenters. The let ters dealt with some principles relating to the influence of legislation upon social processes, and began the train of thought which Spencer later developed in his
as a series of changes occurring in an organism in such ways as involve °a continuous adjust ment of inner relations to outer relations.° The mental processes are then defined as a special accompaniment and result of the adjustment in question. Between 1856 and 1860 Spencer, despite considerable interruption through ill health, published a large number of essays in various periodicals, among which the most ins portant arc: (1) the four papers which were later brought together in his volume on