ct met with in reading, would dwell with me;
apparently because I had a sense of its significance. . . . A week
afterwards, possibly, the matter would be remembered; and with further
thought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider application:
new instances being aggregated with those already noted. Again, after
an interval," etc., etc. "And thus, little by little, in unobtrusive
ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort, there would
grow up a coherent and organized theory" (vol. i, page 464).

A sort of mill, this, wound up to grind in a certain way, and
irresponsive otherwise.

"To apply day after day merely with the general idea of acquiring
information, or of increasing ability, was not in me." "Anything like
passive receptivity is foreign to my nature; and there results an
unusually small tendency to be affected by others' thoughts. It seems
as though the fabric of my conclusions had in all cases to be developed
from within. Material which could be taken in and organized so as to
form part of a coherent structure, there was always a readiness to
receive. But ideas and sentiments of alien kinds, or unorganizable
kinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with indifference, and soon
dropped away." "It has always been out of the question for me to go on
reading a book the fundamental principles of which I entirely dissent
from. I take it for granted that if the fundamental principles are
wrong the rest cannot be right; and thereupon cease reading--being, I
suspect, rather glad of an excuse for doing so." "Systematic books of
a political or ethical kind, written from points of view quite unlike
my own, were either not consulted at all, or else they were glanced at
and thereafter disregarded" (vol. i, pages 215, 277, 289, 350).

There is pride rather than compunction in these confessions. Spencer's
mind was so narrowly systematized, that he was at last almost incapable
of believing in the reality of alien ways of feeling. The invariable
arrogance of his replies to criticisms shows his absolute
self-confidence. Every opinion in the world had to be articulately
right or articulately wrong,--so proved by some principle or other of
his infallible system.

He confesses freely his own inflexibility and censoriousness. His
account of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity.
Born of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of
absolute punctuality. Always he