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In Mr. Spencer's latest book, "Facts and Comments," a little light is thrown on the author's habits, opinions, and predilections. Referring to the athleticism to which so much attention is paid just now in English and American universities, he points out how erroneous it is to identify muscular strength with constitutional strength. Not only is there error in assuming that increase of muscular power and increase of general vigor necessarily go together, but there is error in assuming that the reverse connection cannot hold. As a matter of fact, the abnormal powers acquired by gymnasts may be at the cost of constitutional deterioration. In a paper on "Party Government" the author maintains that what we boast of as political freedom consists in the ability to choose a despot, or a group of oligarchs, and, after long misbehavior has produced dissatisfaction, to choose another despot or group of oligarchs: having meanwhile been made subject to laws, some of which are repugnant. Abolish the existing conventional usages, with respect to party fealty,–let each member of parliament feel that he may express by his vote his adverse belief respecting a government measure, without endangering the government's stability,–and the whole vicious system of party government would disappear. In a paper on "Patriotism," Mr. Spencer says that to him the cry "Our country, right or wrong," seems detestable. The love of country, he adds, is not fostered in him by remembering that when, after England's Prime Minister had declared that Englishmen were bound in honor to the Khedive to reconquer the Soudan, they, after the reconquest, forthwith began to administer it in the name of the Queen and the Khedive, thereby practically annexing it; and when, after promising through the mouths of two colonial Ministers not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, the British Government proceeded to insist on certain electoral arrangements, and made resistance the excuse for a desolating war. As to the transparent pretence that the Boers commenced the war, Mr. Spencer reminds us that in the far West of the United States, where every man carries his life in his hands and the usages of fighting are well understood, it is held that he is the real aggressor who first moves his hand toward his weapon. The application to the South African contest is obvious. In an essay on "Style," Mr. Spencer tells us that his own diction has been, from the beginning, unpremeditated. It has never occurred to him to take any author as a model. Neither has he at any time examined the writing of this or that author with a view of observing its peculiarities. The thought of style, considered as an end in itself, has rarely, if ever, been present with him, his sole purpose being to express ideas as clearly as possible, and, when the occasion called for it, with as much force as might be. He has observed, however, he says, that some difference has been made in his style by the practice of dictation. Up to 1860 his books and review articles were written with his own hand. Since then they have all been dictated. He thinks that there is foundation for the prevailing belief that dictation is apt to cause diffuseness. The remark was once made to him, it seems, by two good judges–George Henry Lewes and George Eliot–that the style of "Social Statics" is better than the style of his later volumes; Mr. Spencer would ascribe the contrast to the deteriorating effect of dictation. A recent experience has strengthened him in this conclusion. When lately revising "First Principles," which originally was dictated, the cutting out of superfluous words, clauses, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs, had the effect of abridging the work by about one-tenth. Touching the style of other writers, Mr. Spencer points out the defects in some passages quoted from Matthew Arnold and Froude. He says that he is repelled by the ponderous, involved structure of Milton's prose, and he dissents from the applause of Ruskin's style on the ground that it is too self-conscious, and implies too much thought of effect. On the other hand, he has always been attracted by the finished naturalness of Thackeray.

A word should here be said about the misconception of Mr. Spencer's position with reference to the fundamental postulate of religions,–a misconception which used to be more current than it is now. He cannot fairly be described as a materialist. He is no more a materialist than he is a theist. He is, in the strictest sense of the word, an agnostic. He was the most conspicuous example of the thing before Huxley invented the word. The misconception was shared by no less a man than the late Benjamin Jowett, the well-known master of Balliol College, Oxford, who, in one of his published "Letters," says: "I sometimes think that we platonists and idealists are not half so industrious as those repulsive people who only 'believe what they can hold in their hand,' Bain, H. Spencer, etc., who are the very Tuppers of philosophy." It is hard to see how the law of evolution and other generalizations of an abstract kind with which Mr. Spencer's name is associated can be held in anybody's hands. Letting that pass, however, Mr. Spencer has himself suggested that, since the system of synthetic philosophy begins with a division entitled the "Unknowable," having for its purpose to show that all material phenomena are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge,–that "force as we know it can be regarded only as a Conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause"–there has been thereby afforded sufficiently decided proof of belief in something which cannot be held in the hands. It is, indeed, absurd to apply the epithet "materialist" to a man who has written in "The Principles of Psychology": "Hence, though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called matter into so-called spirit than to translate so-called spirit into so-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols."