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SPENCER'S
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
THE HERBERT SPENCER LECTURE
DELIVERED AT THE MUSEUM
7 NOVEMBER, 1913
BY
C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S.
Price Two Shillings net
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
MCMXIII
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY
SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthfulenthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on The ScientificUse of the Imagination. The vision of the conquest of nature byphysical science—a vision which had but lately begun to open up to mywondering gaze—was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theoryof evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that ithad come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of us—theenlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as araw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of allauthority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a newloyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence theinner core of evolution lay revealed.
'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that notalone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, notalone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone theexquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that thehuman mind itself—emotion, intellect and all their phenomena—wereonce latent in a fiery cloud.'[1]
With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of myfather's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in myinterests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion wasnot perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modestthought; he inquired whether I had not[4] learnt from Sartor Resartusthat the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade medevote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndallreally meant—meant in