The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects
by Herbert Spencer

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Title: Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects
Everyman's Library

Author: Herbert Spencer

Commentator: Charles W. Eliot

Release Date: August 11, 2005 [EBook #16510]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_EVERYMAN, I will go with thee,
and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side_

HERBERT SPENCER

Born at Derby in 1820, the son of a teacher,
from whom he received most of his education.
Obtained employment on the London and
Birmingham Railway. After the strike of 1846
he devoted himself to journalism, and in
1848 was sub-editor of _The Economist_.

He died in 1903.

HERBERT SPENCER

Essays on Education
AND KINDRED SUBJECTS

INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT

DENT: LONDON
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
DUTTON: NEW YORK

_Made in Great Britain
at the
Aldine Press . Letchworth . Herts
for
J.M. DENT & SONS LTD
Aldine House . Bedford Street . London
First published in Everyman's Library 1911
Last reprinted 1963_

NO. _504_

INTRODUCTION

The four essays on education which Herbert Spencer published in a single
volume in 1861 were all written and separately published between 1854
and 1859. Their tone was aggressive and their proposals revolutionary;
although all the doctrines--with one important exception--had already
been vigorously preached by earlier writers on education, as Spencer
himself was at pains to point out. The doctrine which was comparatively
new ran through all four essays; but was most amply stated in the essay
first published in 1859 under the title "What Knowledge is of Most
Worth?" In this essay Spencer divided the leading kinds of human
activity into those which minister to self-preservation, those which
secure the necessaries of life, those whose end is the care of
offspring, those which make good citizens, and those which prepare
adults to enjoy nature, literature, and the fine