First Principles
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~230,000 words · 1,071 passages
Cite this work
- APAHerbert Spencer. (n.d.). First Principles. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/first-principles
- MLAHerbert Spencer. First Principles. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/first-principles.
- ChicagoHerbert Spencer. First Principles. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/first-principles.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The volume that opens Spencer's system: first what science cannot know, then the single law he believed explained everything else.
Context and history
Published in 1862. The first part concedes to religion that there is an Unknowable and places it outside science; the second defines evolution as the passage from the homogeneous and indefinite to the heterogeneous and definite, and from there Spencer will apply the same formula to biology, psychology, sociology and ethics in the volumes that follow. That project of a single system for all the sciences is what posterity has not bought, and it is what makes him read today as a document.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
With advancing political opinion has come still greater restriction of imperial power. Belief in the supernatural character of the ruler, long ago repudiated by ourselves for example, has left behind it nothing more than the popular tendency to ascribe unusual goodness, wisdom, and beauty to the monarch. Loyalty, which originally meant implicit submission to the king’s will, now means a merely nominal profession of subordination, and the fulfilment of certain forms of respect. Our political practice, and our political theory, alike utterly reject those regal prerogatives which once passed unquestioned. By deposing some, and putting others in their places, we have not only denied the divine rights of certain men to rule; but we have denied that they have any rights beyond those originating in the assent of the nation. Though our forms of speech and our state-documents still assert the subjection of the citizens to the ruler, our actual beliefs and our daily proceedings implicitly assert the contrary. We obey no laws save those of our own making. We have entirely divested the monarch of legislative power; and should immediately rebel against his or her exercise of such power, even in matters of the smallest concern. In brief, the aboriginal doctrine is all but extinct among us. Nor has the rejection of primitive political beliefs, resulted only in transferring the authority of an autocrat to a representative body. The views entertained respecting governments in general, of whatever form, are now widely different from those once entertained. Whether popular or despotic, governments were in ancient times supposed to have unlimited authority over their subjects. Individuals existed for the benefit of the State; not the State for the benefit of individuals. In our days, however, not only has the national will been in many cases substituted for the will of the king; but the exercise of this national will has been restricted to a much smaller sphere.…