ccupies with fuller
and riper detail, resolves the whole of science into still more ultimate
principles, and works the whole up into a more compact and comprehensive
system. He is valiant before all for science, and relegates everything
and every interest to Agnosticism that cannot give proof of its
scientific rights. "What a thing is in itself," he says, "cannot be
known, because to know it we must strip it of all that it becomes, of all
that has come to adhere to it." The ultimate thus arrived at he finds to
be, and calls, Energy, and that therefore, he says, we don't and can't
know. That a thing _is_ what it becomes seems never to occur to him, and
yet only the knowledge of that is the knowledge of the ultimate of being,
which is the thing he says we cannot know. To trace life to its roots he
goes back to the cell, whereas common-sense would seem to require us, in
order to know what the cell is, to inquire at the fruit. This is the
doctrine of St. John, "The Word was God." In addition to agnosticism
another doctrine of Spencer's is Evolution, but in maintaining this he
fails to see he is arguing for an empty conception barren of all thought,
which thought is the alpha and omega of the whole process, and is as much
an ultimate as and still more so than the energy in which he absorbs God.
Indeed, his philosophy is what is called the AUFKLAeRUNG (q. v.)
in full bloom, and in which he strips us of all our spiritual content or
_Inhalt_, and under which he would lead us out of "HOUNDSDITCH"
(q. v.), not _with_, but _without_, all that properly belongs to us;
_b_. 1820.

SPENCER GULF, a deep inlet on the coast of South Australia, 180 m.
by 90 m.

SPENER, PHILIP JACOB, German Protestant theologian, founder of the
PIETISTS (q. v.), born in Alsace, studied in Strasburg; in 1670
held a series of meetings which he called "Collegia Pietatis," whence the
name of his sect; established himself in Dresden and in Berlin, but Halle
was the centre of the movement; he was an earnest and universally
esteemed man (1636-1705).

SPENSER, EDMUND, author of the "Faerie Queene," and one of England's
greatest poets; details of his life are scanty and often hypothetical;
born at London of poor but well-connected parents; entered Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge, as a "sizar" in 1569, and during his seven years' residence
there became an excellent scholar; took a master's degree, and formed an
important friendship with Gabriel Harvey; three years