prodigious tide of industrial and social change, which necessarily involved wide-spread and profound educational reform.
This introduction deals with Spencer's four essays on education; but in the present volume are included three other famous essays written by him during the same period (1854-59) which produced the essays on education. All three are germane to the educational essays, because they deal with the general law of human progress, with the genesis of that science which Spencer thought to be the knowledge of most worth, and with the origin and function of music, a subject which he maintained should play an important part in any scheme of education.
CHARLES W. ELIOT.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
WORKS. The Proper Sphere of Government, 1843; Social Statics, 1850; Theory of Population (_Westminster Review_), April 1852; The Development of Hypothesis (_The Leader_), 20th March 1852; The Ultimate Laws of Physiology (_National Review_), April 1857; _Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative_, 2 vols., 1858-63; Education, 1861; A System of Synthetic Philosophy (12 vols., 1862-96), made up as follows: First Principles, 1862; Principles of Biology, 2 vols., 1864-7; Principles of Psychology, 2 vols., 1870-2; Principles of Sociology, 3 vols., 1876-96; Ceremonial Institutions, 1879; Principles of Morality, 2 vols., 1879-93 (vol. i, part I published as Data of Ethics, 1879; part 4 as Justice, 1891); Political Institutions, 1882. Meanwhile the following works were also published: The Classification of the Sciences, 1864; The Study of Sociology, 1872; Descriptive Sociology, 1873; The Man versus the State, 1884; The Factors of Organic Evolution, 1887; The Inadequacy of Natural Selection, 1893. Spencer's Autobiography appeared posthumously, 2 vols., 1904.
COLLECTED EDITION. Nineteen volumes, 1861-1902.
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. T. Funk-Brentano, Les Sophistes grecs et les Sophistes contemporains (Mill and Spencer), 1879; F.H. Collins, An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy, 1889; H. Sidgwick, _Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau_, 1902; 'The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer' (in The Philosophy of Kant and Other Lectures, 1905); D. Duncan, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Spencer, 1904; Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 1908; J. Royce, _Herbert Spencer. An Estimate and a Review_, 1904; J.A. Thomson, Herbert Spencer, 1906; W.H. Hudson, Herbert Spencer, 1916; J. Rumney, _Herbert Spencer's Sociology_, 1934; R.C.K. Ensor, _Some Reflections on Herbert Spencer's Doctrine_, 1946.
CONTENTS
PAGE Introduction by Charles W. Eliot vii
PART I
EDUCATION: INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? 1
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION 45
MORAL EDUCATION 84
PHYSICAL EDUCATION 116
PART II
ESSAYS ON KINDRED SUBJECTS
PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE 153
ON MANNERS AND FASHION 198
ON THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE 239
ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF LAUGHTER 298
ON THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF MUSIC 310
ORIGINAL PREFACE
TO
EDUCATION: INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
The four chapters of which this work consists, originally appeared as four Review-articles: the first in the Westminster Review for July 1859; the second in the North British Review for May 1854; and the remaining two in the British Quarterly Review for April 1858 and for April 1859. Severally treating different divisions of the subject, but together forming a tolerably complete whole, I originally wrote them with a view to their republication in a united form; and they would some time since have thus been issued, had not a legal difficulty stood in the way. This difficulty being now removed, I hasten to fulfil the intention with which they were written.
That in their first shape these chapters were severally independent, is the reason to be assigned for some slight repetitions which occur in them: one leading idea, more especially, reappearing twice. As, however, this idea is on each occasion presented under a new form, and as it can scarcely be too much enforced, I have not thought well to omit any of the passages embodying it.
Some additions of importance will be found in the chapter on Intellectual Education; and in the one on Physical Education there are a few minor alterations. But the chief changes which have been made, are changes of expression: all of the essays having undergone a careful verbal revision.
H.S. LONDON, _May 1861_
SPENCER'S ESSAYS
PART I--ON EDUCATION
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
It has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration precedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, savages turn them to some ludicrous display, show how completely the
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