Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencerwas an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 April 1820
law practice clear-head
There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.
law speech utterance
Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.
average law special
Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.
law organization long
No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres.
selfish men law
What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.
organization law function
A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.
men law evil
Progress is not an accident, not a thing within human control, but a beneficent necessity ... due to the working of a universal law. So surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect.
law giving survival
The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.
alike almost beliefs centuries everywhere futility held insisted needs past perceive
Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and perpetually insisted upon
gentlemen lady nose
of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
darwin express mechanical races sought struggle survival
The survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.
free perfectly till
No one can be perfectly free till all are free.
benefit english-philosopher exists members society
Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.
bear constant english-philosopher lower men
The behavior of men to the lower animals, and their behavior to each other, bear a constant relationship.