d, are those which he quickly
seizes--ever passing at once through details to lay hold of
essentials; and having laid hold of them, he clearly sets them forth
afresh in his own way with added illustrations. But it is morally even
more than intellectually that he has proved himself a true missionary
of advanced ideas. Extremely energetic--so energetic that no one has
been able to cheek his over-activity--he has expended all his powers
in advancing what he holds to be the truth; and not only his powers
but his means. It has proved impossible to prevent him from injuring
himself in health by his exertions; and it has proved impossible to
make him pay due regard to his personal interests. So that toward the
close of life he finds himself wrecked in body and impoverished in
estate by thirty years of devotion to high ends. Among worshipers of
humanity, who teach that human welfare should be the dominant aim, I
have not heard of one whose sacrifices will bear comparison with those
of my friend.

[Footnote 52: Spencer's debt to Professor Youmans has been well known
in America. He was not only instrumental in securing the publication
of his works here, but even more so in popularizing them through the
_Popular Science Monthly_, of which he was the editorial founder. He
had other distinction as a chemist and published a "Class Book of
Chemistry" in 1852, and an "Atlas of Chemistry," in 1854.]

VI

WHY HE NEVER MARRIED[53]

Thus, if I leave out altruistic considerations and include egoistic
considerations only, I may still look back from these declining days
of life with content. One drawback indeed there has been, and that a
great one. All through those years in which work should have had the
accompaniment of wife and children, my means were such as to render
marriage impossible: I could barely support myself, much less others.
And when, at length, there came adequate means the fit time had passed
by. Even in this matter, however, it may be that fortune has favored
me. Frequently when prospects are promising, dissatisfaction follows
marriage rather than satisfaction; and in my own case the prospects
would not have been promising. I am not by nature adapted to a
relation in which perpetual compromise and great forbearance are
needful. That extreme critical tendency which I have above described,
joined with a lack of reticence no less pronounced, would, I fear,
have caused perpetual domestic differences. After all, my