ts would be declared untrue, and religion would go by the
board. Now that the theory of evolution is everywhere accepted, even in
the churches, we see how groundless were the fears. All that is
beautiful and best we still have in religion in a degree never before
known.

In an essay on "Manners and Fashion," published in the "Westminster
Review" of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, Herbert Spencer says: "Forms,
ceremonies and even beliefs are cast aside only when they become
hindrances--only when some finer and better plan has been formed; and
they bequeath to us all the good that was in them. The abolition of
tyrannical laws has left the administration of justice not only
unimpaired, but purified. Dead and buried creeds have not carried down
with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists,
uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of
justice, kindness and beauty embodied in our cumbrous forms will live
perennially, when the forms themselves have been repudiated and
forgotten."

In the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, Spencer issued his "Principles
of Psychology," showing that the doctrine of evolution was then with him
a fixed fact. The struggle was on, and from now forward his life was
enlisted to viewing this theory from every side, anticipating every
possible objection to it, and restating the case in its relation to
every phase of life and nature.

Spencer's income was small, but his wants were few, and a single room in
a boarding-house sufficed for both workshop and sleeping-room. To a
degree, he now largely ceased original investigations and made use of
the work of others. His intuitive mind, long trained in analytical
research, was able to sift the false from the true, the trite from the
peculiar, the exceptional from the normal.

* * * * *

The year Eighteen Hundred Sixty should be marked on history's page with
a silver star, for it was in that year that Herbert Spencer issued his
famous prospectus setting forth that he was engaged in formulating a
system of philosophy which he proposed to issue in periodical parts to
subscribers. He then followed with an outline of the ground he intended
to cover. Ten volumes would be issued, and he proposed to take twenty
years to complete the task.

The entire Synthetic Philosophy was then in his mind and he knew what he
wanted to do. The courage and faith of the man were dauntless. Michael
Ros