Herbert Spencer

We have repeatedly observed that while any whole is evolving, there is always going on an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself; but we have not observed that this equally holds of the totality of things, which is made up of …

Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.

in deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method of civilization will help to guide us.

It is provable both that the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, a necessary one; and that the causes which determined it apply to the child

If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order.

The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind, considered historically.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts — as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of …

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may …

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all …

in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions.

Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, …

that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced.

a very grotesque notion. Habitually, looking at things rather in their statical aspect than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time be …

That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology