I find myself obliged to confess that Spencer is far less of an individualist than his admirers appear to believe. But since the noblest characteristic of an individualist is his self-sufficiency, his admirers will surely waste no tears for the loss of their ally.
He had been, to be sure, a powerful ally. Being on Spencer's side meant being in accord with the most influential recent philosophic doctrine, the doctrine of monistic and evolutionary positivism. But the very thing which the conservatives, in their desire to be in accord with approved thought, have failed to discover, is that this conception cannot rationally be made to serve as a support for individualism. They have copied the pattern of the latest fashion, but that fashion was never meant for figures such as theirs. Individualism is borrowing for itself a uniform designed by collectivists for the use of collectivists. That is what monism is. The dogma of equality in the field of democratic sociology is the counterpart of the dogma of unity in the field of democratic cosmology.
I have called Spencer an evolutionary monist. I might as well have left out the adjective. The theory of evolution is merely one of the methods by which philosophers—those deadly enemies of the particular—have tried to prove unity. Spencer, like all philosophers, is fundamentally a monist, both in his goal and in his methods.
