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Chapter 5 The Reforming Spencerians: William James, Josiah Royce and John Dewey

Mark Francis

The study of Spencer in late nineteenth-century America is primarily a philosophical task: he was regarded by his philosophical readers as the thinker who had expounded scientific method in such a way as to combine it with the pro- gressive development of the psyche and of society. While Americans could, and did, read philosophers of science such as August Comte, J.S. Mill and William Whewell, it was only Spencer who offered a theoretical vision that stretched out to encompass both scientific theories about the brain and the mind. It was this last feature that made Spencer so enticing and dangerous because he threatened both conventional metaphysics and religion. A theory which linked the brain with the mind implied that the latter was not equiva- lent to the spirit or the soul. This, in turn, suggested that without the presence of a spirit or a soul it was difficult to speculate about theology or religion. Following the launch of his System of Philosophy in 1862, Spencer was feted in America. However, a reaction against Spencer began at the time he re-issued his Principles of Psychology (1870–72). The leader of this reaction was Chauncey Wright1 (Fig. 5.1). Shortly before he died, Wright caused a great deal of trouble in the embry- onic discipline of philosophy in America. Everyone had been enamoured with both Herbert Spencer and science, but Wright forced a choice between them by claiming that Spencer’s synthetic philosophy was not truly scientific, but a mere metaphysical synthesis which contained fundamental statements which were “anticipations of Nature,” and therefore, were incompatible with the true spirit of Baconian inductivism.2 Since Wright’s contemporaries equated a scientific method with a Baconianism in which facts were collated without the prospect of an anticipated outcome, the game was up: there seemed to be no way of reconciling science with a philosophy such as Spencer’s which began with a metaphysical First Principles. Once the authoritative Wright had

1 On Wright, see Elizabeth Flower and Murray G. Murphey, A History of Philosophy in America, New York: Capricorn Books, 1977, vol. II, 541. 2 John Fiske, “Chauncey Wright,” Darwinism and other Essays, London, MacMillan, 1879, 85.

Figure 5.1 Wright and the destruction of Spencer’s metaphysical science. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), vol I, facing p. 506. announced that inductivism did not allow for metaphysics unless it abandoned its basis in reality, the imperative philosophical task became the construction of a metaphysics that was linked with science and that would buttress the Spencerian synthesis. The correct way of rescuing, and of appro- priating, Spencerianism split American philosophers. Spencer was too important to be abandoned so this division was not between the Spencerians and anti-Spencerians, but between two sides in an intellectual civil war in which both claimed to be the rightful heirs to the true appropriation of Spencer’s synthesis of philosophy and science. The first group, led by John Fiske, claimed to be the orthodox one and had the virtue of being recognized by the great man himself. These took upon themselves the duty of defending Spencer against any and all criticism. The second group were the reformers who rewrote Spencer’s philosophy and psychology so that these would be sci- entifically grounded and protected from the charges that Wright had levelled. The chief Spencerian reformers were William James, Josiah Royce and John Dewey. What made them chiefs was not just their political acumen, but the popular quality of their writings. While critical of Spencer, they proclaimed their continued adherence to his doctrines: reformers such as James, Royce and Dewey were not anti-Spencerian, but, in their own eyes, revisionist philosophers who appropriated what was central to Spencerianism. Royce and James both used Spencer’s texts when teaching at Harvard. Royce even ele- vated Spencer to the same level as Spinoza in making his work a text for his course in the philosophy of nature.3 James used Spencer’s Principles of

3 John Clendenning, The Life and Thoughts of Josiah Royce, Vanderbilt University Press, revised edition, 1999, 144.