The Herbert Spencer Lecture: Delivered at Oxford, March 9, 1995 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Herbert Spencer Lecture: Delivered at Oxford, March 9, 1995

But, again, this is no occasion for an apodictic eulogy. I come here to speak of a system of philosophy - not to praise a man in words of idle rhetoric. As this is the first of these Lectures, as I was myself in touch so long and so closely with Herbert Spencer the man, and not simply the author of books, it will be right for me to begin with some personal reminiscences. I shall then seek to call attention to thepermanent significance of the Synthetic Philosophy, without pretending to conceal what I hold to be its aspects of weakness and narrowness, but without venturing to insist on or to develop these points of difference. And finally, I shall ask your indulgence if I try to sketch in slight outline those conditions of logic, of science, of human psychology, which must be fulfilled by any scheme of Sym'hész's worthy of that great name, apart from the special doctrines whether of Spencer or of Comte.

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