ABSTRACT
It is hard to recapture the power of Herbert Spencer's ideas and easy to mock him. What Spencer gave was the organic analogy and functionalist thinking based on the biological concepts of structure, anthropology and political theory. Apart from physical, biological and human sciences impact on the theological and religious debates of the mid-Victorian church, Charles Darwin's theories of evolution based on his travels and research, codified in his 1859 best-seller On the Origins of Species. This book was written as an attack on Benthamite Utilitarianism at a time when there were grave doubts that the ethical and social principle of the greatest good for the greatest number could be engineered. The justification of the ways of God to man had for centuries been expressed in natural theology the reconciliation of God's word the Scripture with his works nature. Spencer was horrified when Social Darwinism, was used to justify policies to which he was deeply opposed.
