Social Statics

Herbert Spencer

Language:

English

Status:

Complete work

Authorship:

Written by the author

PREFACE. Being somewhat at variance with precedent, the tone and mode of treatment occasionally adopted in the following pages vnh, perhaps, provoke criticism. Whether, in thus innovating upon estabhshed usage, the writer has acted judiciously or otherwise, the event must determine. He has not, however, transgressed without adequate motive; having done so under the belief that, as it is the purpose of a book to influence con- duct, the best way of writing a book must be the way best fitted to effect this purpose. Should exception be taken to the manifestations of feeling now and then met with, as out of place in a treatise having so scientific a title; it is replied that, in their present phase of progress, men are but little swayed by purely intellectual con- siderations— that to be operative, these must be enforced by direct or imphed appeals to the sentiments — and that, pro- vided such appeals are not in 2}lccce of, but merely supple- mentary to, the deductions of logic, no well-grounded objection can be made to them. The reader will find that the several conclusions submitted to him are primarily based on entirely impersonal reasoning, by which alone they may be judged; and if, for the sake of commending these conclusions to the VI PREFACE. VI PREFACE. many, the sympathies have been indirectly addressed, the general argument cannot have been thereby weakened, if it has not been strengthened. Possibly the relaxations of style in some cases used, will be censured, as beneath the gravity of the subject. In defence of them it may be urged, that the measured movement which custom prescribes for philosophical works, is productive of a monotony extremely repulsive to the generahty of readers. That no counterbalancing

Read the full work →