not the
heart of it. See SPIRITUAL, THE.

SPEDDING, JAMES, editor of Bacon, born at Mirehouse, near Keswick,
son of a Cumberland squire; scholar and honorary Fellow of Cambridge;
became in 1847 Under-Secretary of State with L2000 a year; devoted his
life to the study of Bacon, the fruit of which the "Letters and the Life
of Francis Bacon, including all his Occasional Works, newly selected and
set forth with a Commentary, Biographical and Historical," in 7 vols.; a
truly noble man, and much esteemed by his contemporaries in literature
(1808-1881).

SPEKE, JOHN BANNING, African explorer, born in Somersetshire; became
a soldier, and served in the Punjab; joined Burton in 1854 in an
expedition into Somaliland, and three years after in an attempt to
discover the sources of the Nile, and setting out alone discovered
Victoria Nyanza, which he maintained was the source of the river, but
which Burton questioned; on his return he published in 1863 an account of
his discovery, which he was about to defend in the British Association
when he was shot by the accidental discharge of his gun while he was out
hunting (1827-1864).

SPENCE, JOSEPH, a miscellaneous writer, born in Hants; educated at
and a Fellow of Oxford; his principal work, "Polymetis; or, an Inquiry
into the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains
of Ancient Artists"; his "Anecdotes" are valuable from his acquaintance
with the literary class of the time, and have preserved his name
(1699-1768).

SPENCER, HERBERT, systematiser and unifier of scientific knowledge
up to date, born at Derby, son of a teacher, who early inoculated him
with an interest in natural objects, though he adopted at first the
profession of a railway engineer, which in about eight years he abandoned
for the work of his life by way of literature, his first effort being a
series of "Letters on the Proper Sphere of Government" in the
_Nonconformist_ in 1842, and his first work "Social Statics," published
in 1851, followed by "Principles of Psychology" four years after; in 1861
he published a work on "Education," and his "First Principles" the
following year, after which he began to construct his system of
"Synthetic Philosophy," which fills a dozen large volumes, and has
established his fame as the foremost scientific philosopher of the time.
Following in the lines of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, he takes a
wider sweep than either of them, fills the field he o