Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903)

(Spencer’s best work on political philosophy; hard but rewarding.)

(A comprehensive account of mind, intelligence, the nervous system, feelings, perceptions, memory, reasoning, sympathy and realism; very dense.)

(Four very readable, instructive and popular essays extolling the value of natural methods in education.)

(A work in two parts: ‘The Unknowable’, which shows how all science led ultimately (like all religion) to a belief in an Absolute that transcended human understanding; and ‘Laws of the Knowable’ – a statement of the fundamental scientific principles governing the world.)

(A comprehensive and highly technical account of morphology, physiology, reproduction, growth, development, heredity, variation and evolution.)

(A pioneering work of popularization for the discipline of sociology, providing an easy-to-read explanation of the nature and importance of the sociological method; still a standard text.)

(At 2,300 pages, a massive but very readable study of anthropology, social structure, the family and ceremonial, political, religious, professional and industrial institutions.)

(An evolutionary approach to moral philosophy, in which justice and beneficence are dissected for their social value; readable but much less impressive than Social Statics.)

(Four highly polemical essays in which Spencer denounces the increasing collectivism of governmental policy in late nineteenth-century Britain; entertaining and thought-provoking.)

(A collection of highly accessible articles published by Spencer in leading Victorian periodicals, ranging over science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology and politics. Contains ‘The Development Hypothesis’ (1852) and ‘Progress: its Law and Cause’ (1857) in vol. 1.)

(Gray argues that Spencer was an ‘indirect utilitarian’, justifying the law of equal freedom on grounds that it would lead to happiness.)

(Argues that Spencer’s law of equal freedom drew its authority neither from utility nor from rights, but from the moral sense.)

(A comprehensive rebuttal of the repeated charge that Spencer was contradictory in yoking together political individualism and social organicism.)

(An authoritative book containing an impressive chapter on Spencer.)

(This scholarly book is by far the best critical study of Spencer’s ideas. Peel sets these ideas in their historical and intellectual context, and shows their enduring influence.)

(Steiner argues that Spencer presents his law of equal freedom as a basic moral axiom – an intrinsic principle of right.)

(A major study of Spencer in relation to other individualists in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century.)