Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects | Page 6

been fortunate among educational
philosophers. He has not had to wait so long for the acceptance of his
teachings as Comenius, Montaigne, or Rousseau waited. His ideas have
been floated on a 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