ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the growth and solidification of Herbert Spencer’s thought—in other words, the elaboration, as exhibited in his earlier writings, of that conception of evolution which was to find its definite expression in the majestic series of works of which the Synthetic Philosophy is composed. There is no safer or more satisfactory approach to the study of any system of philosophy than by the way of its evolution. The period of Spencer’s youth and ripening manhood was a period of transition in scientific and philosophic thought. The momentous questions thus raised and briefly dealt with by Mr. Spencer in this youthful production came in for more thorough and extended treatment a few years later in his first considerable work, Social Statics, which was published in 1850, when the author was just thirty years of age. Between 1850 and 1860 some twenty-five exhaustive articles from Spencer’s pen were published in the leading organs of liberal thought.
