Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2015 Herbert Spencer and His American Audience Joel F. Yoder Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Yoder, Joel F., "Herbert Spencer and His American Audience" (2015). Dissertations. 1660. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1660 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2015 Joel F. Yoder LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS AMERICAN AUDIENCE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN HISTORY BY JOEL F. YODER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2015 Copyright by Joel F. Yoder, 2015 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisory committee for their unstinting support through the sometimes difficult process of research and writing. Timothy Gilfoyle, who served as chair, provided feedback that was timely and specific. Patricia Mooney‐Melvin gave encouragement when I needed it most, and advice that I often waited too long to follow. Aiden Forth bravely stepped in midway, though he did not know what he was letting himself in for. I would also like to thank the members of the Loyola University graduate history Dissertation Working Group for reading and commenting on the first four chapters. Steve Catania, Anthony Di Lorenzo, Erin Feichtinger, Devin Hunter, Will Ippen, Pete Kotowski, Chris Ramsey, Amelia Serafine, Jeff Wing, and others made helpful comments on one chapter or another; I would like to thank Amy Oberlin especially for both her comments and for organizing the group. A week in Loyola’s dissertation boot camp helped me get words on paper, so I thank Dina Berger and Jessica Horowitz for organizing that. The staff at Loyola’s Cudahy Library were also helpful, especially Jane Currie and Jennifer Stegen. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Teresa Yoder, whose patient, unflagging confidence was more significant than any dedication can express. iii To Teresa Who supported me in countless ways TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: HERBERT SPENCER’S EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS .................................... 22 CHAPTER TWO: SPENCER IN HIS THIRTIES ........................................................................ 86 CHAPTER THREE: FIRST PRINCIPLES ................................................................................ 159 CHAPTER FOUR: BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY ................................................................ 227 CHAPTER FIVE: HERBERT SPENCER AND AMERICAN FAME ............................................ 286 CHAPTER SIX: A GIANT IN WINTER ................................................................................. 360 CONCLUSION: A MAN FOR HIS TIME .............................................................................. 434 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 452 VITA ................................................................................................................................. 470 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. “Our distinguished guest—Herbert Spencer holds the mirror up to our political system.” J. Kepler, Puck 12, no. 295 (Nov. 1, 1882), 136 ................................... 394 Figure 2. “A Disciple of the Great Philosopher” Frederick Burr Opper, Puck 12, no. 298 (Nov. 22, 1882), 182 ............................................................................................ 397 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations have been used for frequently cited sources. Full publication information for each book is given in a footnote where it is first cited in a chapter, and in the bibliography. AB An Autobiography. 2 vols. London, 1904. DE The Data of Ethics. New York, 1879. Edu Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. New York, 1860. Essays Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. 3 vols. London, 1858‐1874. GEL The George Eliot Letters. 8 vols. New Haven, Conn., 1954‐1978. FP First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. 1st ed. New York, 1865. FP2 First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. 2nd ed. New York, 1869. LL Duncan, David. The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. New York, 1908. MvS The Man versus the State. New York, 1885. NNR Youmans, E. L., ed. The Nature and Reality of Religion. New York, 1885. PB The Principles of Biology. 2 vols. New York, 1864‐1867. PE The Principles of Ethics. 2 vols. New York, 1892‐1893. PP The Principles of Psychology, 1st ed. London, 1855. PP2 The Principles of Psychology, 2nd ed. 2 vols. New York, 1871‐1873. PS The Principles of Sociology. 3 vols. New York, 1877‐1896. SS Social Statics. London, 1850. Study The Study of Sociology. New York, 1873. vii INTRODUCTION British philosopher Herbert Spencer has fallen into such obscurity that his tremendous popularity among his contemporaries is difficult to believe. Though he was an “independent scholar” in the truest sense of the word—refusing all institutional affiliation and almost all public recognition of any kind—he was famous not just among intellectuals, but among educated readers worldwide. He was, quite possibly, the only philosopher in history whose books sold more than a million copies during his lifetime.1 Spencer’s work was translated into more than a dozen languages, first into Russian, then to French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and eventually to Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and possibly even Mohawk.2 For many non‐ Western readers he stood for science, rationality, and progress against backwardness and mysticism; his anti‐imperialism took some of the sting out of his affirmations of European superiority.3 Educated men and women all over the world considered Spencer the master thinker of the age, whether or not they agreed with him. 1 Michael W. Taylor, The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (London: Continuum, 2007), 4. Taylor extrapolates based on the nearly 370,000 books sold by his American publisher alone. 2 John Offer, Herbert Spencer and Social Theory (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 8‐9.; Naomi Beck, “The Diffusion of Spencerism and its Political Implications in France and Italy,” in Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy, Proceedings of a Conference Organised by the Galton Institute, London, 2003 (London: The Galton Institute, 2004), 41‐57. 3 J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 3. 1 2 Spencer wrote on an incredible variety of topics, from physics to metaphysics, from biology to aesthetics. His greatest work, and the one which cemented his fame, was his ten‐volume Synthetic Philosophy, which covered all scientific phenomena from the beginning of the cosmos to its end, embracing biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics. He also wrote on topics as diverse as style, manners, music, art, health, and parenting. Yet today his books sit in libraries unread. One brave explorer, reporting that he was the first to read the Royal Society’s copy of The Principles of Biology, described the volumes as “thicker and squarer than Gibbon’s, each bound in a cloth which has acquired with age a reptilian colour and texture, so putting one in mind of some great extinct monster of philosophic learning.”4 The metaphor is pervasive: in a book on Spencer’s sociology, J. D. Y. Peel referred to Spencer’s works as “the fossil remains of an extinct megasaur,” while Richard Hofstadter called them “a fossil specimen from which the intellectual body of the period may be reconstructed.”5 Spencer’s work no longer lives for modern readers. However, a study of its petrified remains provides a window into the intellectual culture of the Victorian era. This is particularly true of the American scene, for Spencer was more popular in the United States than in his home country, especially at the beginning of his career. 4 P. B. Medawar, The Art of the Soluble (London: Methuen, 1967), 39. 5 Peel, Herbert Spencer, 4; Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992 [1944]), 31. 3 Spencer and Social Darwinism Today, if Spencer is known at all, it is as an extreme conservative, the architect behind the doctrine of social Darwinism. This is particularly true for students of American history. Since the publication of Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought, it has been a commonplace that the Gilded Age was a time of intense and savage economic competition in which robber barons used the notion of the “survival of the fittest” to justify their rapacity and greed.6 Spencer,