The Man Versus the State

FOREWORD

FOREWORD Herbert Spencer produced four major works in political philosophy plus numerous additional and important essays. The first of these works, The Proper Sphere of Government (1842) is the least well-known. The second is Spencer's most famous systemic treatise in this area, Social Statics (1851). The Man Versus The State (1884), which is the centerpiece of this volume, is the third major political work. This is a more polemical and quasisociological work than either the first two or Spencer's fourth major political study, "Justice," Part IV of The Principles of Ethics (1891). In addition to presenting the first and third of these studies, the present volume makes available two of Spencer's relatively early political essays, "OverLegislation " (1853) and "Representative Government" (1857); two of his important essays in political sociology, "The Social Organism" (186o) and "Specialized Administration " (1871); and "From Freedom to Bondage" ix X The Man Versus The State {t8gt), which extends the polemical and analytic themes of The Man Versus The State. Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England on April 27, 1820.1 He entered a family of dissenting clergymen and teachers in which a long opposition to State-Church ties and solid identification with the rising commercial classes had bred a strong anti-statist individualism. Both his father, George Spencer, and his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, were supporters of Church disestablishment , the anti-Corn Law Movement and the extention of the franchise. As autodidacts and teachers, Spencer's father and uncles looked to the sciences and their practical applications rather than to the classical tradition. Their anti-statist individualism and their scientifically oriented rationalism were passed on to Herbert Spencer. Spencer himself points to the possible Hussite and Hugenot origins of family as a partial explanation of his own individualism and disregard for authority. And he often recounts how his belief in a universe entirely governed by natural causal law grew out of his father's scientific interests and curiosity about the causes of natural phenomena. Spencer's education was almost entirely in the hands of his father and, later, his uncles William and Thomas. 1Two remarkably dry and impersonal accounts of Spencer's life are: An Autobiography of Herbert Spencer 2 volumes (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904); and D. Duncan's Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer 2 volumes (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908). D. Wiltshire's The Social and Political Thought ofHerbert Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) is the most systematic on the topic. It is personally sympathetic, highly informative, but too conventional in its own theoretical perspective and evaluation. Foreword xi The focus was on the natural and biological sciences. He gathered plants and insects, performed experiments, sketched and worked out problems in mathematics and attended lectures at the Derby Philosophical Society. When Spencer was in his teens his uncle Thomas sought to broaden his education with classics, languages and history. But his rebellious nephew proved to be relatively immune to such useless and dogmatic pastimes. In November 1837, just after Victoria ascended to the throne, Spencer joined the engineering staff of the London and Birmingham Railway. Until1841 and again from 1845 through 1848, working for a number of different firms, Spencer participated in the great expansive phase of railway construction. He appears to have been highly competent and successful at all the engineering tasks undertaken; during these years, and later, Spencer produced a variety of mechanical inventions, and between 1839 and 1842 he published seven articles in the Civil Engineer's and Architect's Journal. Only his greater interest in a literary career and, perhaps, the difficulty that this sober and intense young man had in forming warm relations with his colleagues precluded a full-term career in civil engineering. In later years this spectacular growth of the British rail system was continually to serve Spencer as an example of progressive, non-governmental social co-ordination. And just as continually, he used the failure of municipal governments to restrict the noise of trains as an example of the failure of governments to carry out their proper negative functions. In the Spring of 1842 Spencer began a series of letters to the radical dissenting journal, the Nonconformist. Re- xii The Man Versus The State printed in pamphlet form The Proper Sphere ofGovernment is in some respects his most radical political essay. Spencer maintains that justice construed as respect for natural rights and...