SPENCERIANISM - Herbert Spencer's Great Work - "First Principles"

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Herbert Spencer Philosopher

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Wikipedia

Born: April 27, 1820, Derby, United Kingdom

Died: December 8, 1903, Brighton, United Kingdom

Parents: William George Spencer

Nominations: Nobel Prize in Literature

Dr. W. J. Durant declared that Herbert Spencer's Great Work, First Principles, made him almost at once the most famous philosopher of his time.

Spencerianism is a philosophic positivism which describes evolution as an ever-increasing complexity with equilibrium as its highest possible state.

According to Spencer, life is a continuous process from homogeneity to heterogeneity and back from heterogeneity to homogeneity. Life also involves the continual adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Most famous of all Spencer's aphorisms is his definition of Deity:

"God is infinite intelligence, infinitely diversified through infinite time and infinite space, manifesting through an infinitude of ever-evolving individuality."

 The universality of the law of evolution was emphasized by Spencer, who applied it not only to the form but also to the intelligence behind the form.  In every manifestation of being he recognized the fundamental tendency of unfoldment from simplicity to complexity, observing that when the point of equilibrium is reached it is always followed by the process of dissolution. According to Spencer, however, disintegration took place only that reintegration might follow upon a higher level of being.

SPENCERIANISM Excerpt from the Secret Teachings of All Ages - Manly Hall

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