would step out of his way to kick a
stone off the pavement lest somebody should trip over it. If he saw
boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he never could pass a
man who was ill-treating a horse without trying to make him behave
better. He would never take off his hat to any one, no matter of what
rank, nor could he be induced to address any one as "Esquire" or as
"Reverend." He would never put on any sign of mourning, even for
father and mother; and he adhered to one style of coat and hat
throughout all changes of fashion. Improvement was his watchword
always and everywhere. Whatever he wrote had to be endlessly
corrected, and his love of detail led all his life to his neglecting
large ends in his care for small ones. A good heart, but a pedantic
conscience, and a sort of energetically mechanical intelligence.

Of himself Herbert Spencer says: "No one will deny that I am much given
to criticism. Along with exposition of my own views there has always
gone a pointing out of defects in those of others. And if this is a
trait in my writing, still more is it a trait in my conversation. The
tendency to fault-finding is dominant--disagreeably dominant. The
indicating of errors in thought and speech made by those around has all
through life been an incurable habit--a habit for which I have often
reproached myself, but to no purpose."

The "Autobiography" abounds in illustrations of the habit. For
instance:--

"Of late I have observed sundry cases in which, having found the right,
people deliberately desert it for the wrong. . . . A generation ago
salt-cellars were made of convenient shapes--either ellipses or
elongated parallelograms: the advantage being that the salt-spoon,
placed lengthwise, remained in its place. But for some time past,
fashion has dictated circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the
salt-spoon will not remain without skilful balancing: it falls on the
cloth. In my boyhood a jug was made of a form at once convenient and
graceful. . . . Now, however, the almost universal form of jug in use
is a frustum of a cone with a miniature spout. It combines all
possible defects. When anything like full, it is impossible to pour
out a small quantity without part of the liquid trickling down beneath
the spout; and a larger quantity cannot be poured out without exceeding
the limits of the spout and running over on each side of it. If the
jug is half empty, the tilting must be contin