| Summary: | "Perhaps it is the fate of all great systems of Philosophy that they should be open to many different interpretations, according as they strike different readers, but it can hardly be questioned, I think, that Mr. Spencer's philosophy is singularly of this character. Many claim him as a materialist, but nothing can be plainer than that he repudiates materialism with all his heart. With more justice perhaps, some claim him as the very chief of empirics, but his system seems to me to have little in common with any system of empiricism. It must be allowed that he is an agnostic, but it is very much open to question whether agnosticism is any necessary and structural part of his philosophy, and whether it may not be a mere excrescence which only deforms and degrades a true and noble system. It is in this latter aspect that it appears to myself; and this volume is written for the purpose of showing that, if the system be made one logical and consistent whole, it is congruous with nothing but theism"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
|
|---|