Spencer, in his fight against the domination of the State and the army, was but a superficial and prehistoric individualist, sentimental and abstract rather than analytical and practical. His individualism was empty and half-hearted.
Despite his scientific pretensions, Spencer was guided more by sentiment than by reason. Instead of seeing clearly the need for realities beneath words, he, like all philanthropists, sought universal love, altruism, and progress. In the last years of his life, perhaps in conscious recognition of this weakness, he sang the praises of sentiment in his Facts and Comments—forgetting the intellectualistic psychology of his youth.
Sentiment appears too in those moral analyses at the end of the Data of Ethics which have been cited in support of the legend of his individualism. He did indeed attempt a rehabilitation of egotism in so far as it tends to altruism—of that egotism which through ego-altruistic sentiments tends toward a final and universal altruism. The ultimate goal is to think of others; it is well to begin by thinking of one's self. The ego is again subordinate to others, the individual to the common herd.
Now for the true individualist there are possible but two attitudes with regard to men: that of the rebel and that of the dominator, that of the libertarian and that of Cæsar. Those who
