penter's error has received prompt and thorough correction. The Daily Telegraph closed a long editorial on Dr. Carpenter's address with a reference to the doctrine of modification of mental faculties through organized and transmitted experiences, and said: "It certainly is a striking theory, and for that reason the speaker might have been expected to avoid the pretence of treating it as if it were originally his own. The honor of opening up this new line of speculation belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer more than to any other man, and yet not a word of recognition was paid to that eminent thinker. If we are to accept the doctrine, let us begin to practise justice on all occasions, so that posterity may have all the advantage, and that future presidents may display an instinctive equity in their addresses."
This called out the following from Dr. Carpenter:
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
Sir: Observing that, in the comments on my Presidential Address which are contained in your leading article this morning, you impute it to me that I have adopted and put forth as my own a doctrine which really belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer, I think it due to myself to state that, as you will see by the slip I enclose from the Brighton Daily News[1] of yesterday, I had supplied—before the delivery of my address—a reference to him, which had been inadvertently omitted from the copies issued by Messrs. Taylor and Francis to the London press, but which I at once transmitted also to the Association printers, to be included in all future copies.
I use the words "first explicitly put forth," because the germ of the doctrine is contained in a paper by Mr. T. Andrew Knight "On the Transmission of Acquired Peculiarities," published in the "Philosophical Transactions" for (I believe) 1837. His views had been introduced into my own "Physiological Treatises" long before my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer began his valuable labors.
| Your obedient servant, |
| WILLIAM B. CARPENTER. |
| British Association, Brighton, August 16th. |
Whereupon the President is again corrected by Mr. Spencer himself:
To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
Sir: Allow me to correct an error respecting date, into which Dr. Carpenter has naturally fallen from his unacquaintance with writings of mine earlier than those he names. It is true that "The Principles of Psychology," in which Mind is dealt with as a product of evolution, and in which the inheritance of accumulated effects of experience is recognized, not simply as producing "acquired peculiarities," but as originating the mental faculties themselves, emotional and intellectual, including the "forms of thought," was not published till 1855. But the doctrine which in that work took a developed and systematic form was set forth in an undeveloped form in works I published long before. Throughout "Social Statics," issued in December, 1850, it is taken as a cardinal principle: sundry leading ethical and political conclusions there drawn depend on the postulate that through inheritance there is a cumulative effect produced by the moral activities on the moral faculties the discipline of social life gradually developing men into greater fitness for the social state (see pp. 33, 65, 413-441, first edition). Further back still is this idea traceable. Through a series of letters on "The Proper Sphere of Government," which I first published in 1842, and republished as a pamphlet in 1843, there runs a belief in human progression as wrought out by natural causes; and along with this there is shown, in its partial applications, the belief that in all creatures, man included, there goes on, through successive generations, a continuous adjustment of faculties, mental as well as bodily, to environing conditions.
While I have pen in hand, let me thank you for supplying the reference which, by the mischance Dr. Carpenter names, was omitted from the reports of his address in the daily papers. I am so much accustomed to see views of mine ascribed to others (as in this week's Saturday Review, p. 208, as well as in this week's Spectator, p. 1030), and I am so little accustomed to see a rectification made by any one on my behalf, that the close of your article on Friday produced in me the effect of a surprise.
| HERBERT SPENCER. |
| Athenaeum Club, August 18th. |
- ↑ "This doctrine was first explicitly put forth by Mr. Herbert Spencer, in whose philosophies, treatises it will be found most ably developed."
