as a thick-and-thin adherent of the Spencerian system; he was not adapted to discipleship. He accepted a number of Spencer's ideas — some of which were sure to appeal to him temperamentally — notably those leading to the laissez-faire attitude and to distrust of socialistic tendencies; but he parted company with Spencer in the latter author's most characteristic and fundamental point of view. Spencer was essentially a philosopher and not a scientist, seeking in his evolutionary studies, carried through the bulky volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy, for an inclusive formula. But this is not what science is looking for, and Sumner's sympathies and respect were all for science — in particular for natural science. He abhorred and eschewed the metaphysical and intuitional; he studied philosophy much as a young man, but as be once expressed it, he "had been engaged in heaving that whole cargo overboard ever since." I have never heard in his conversation or seen in his writings anything to indicate that he accepted the essence of the Spencerian system; on the contrary, he never advised us to read the First Principles or other parts of the Synthetic Philosophy, except, perhaps, the Principles of Biology, and used often to say that the Principles of Sociology represented the only large part of Spencer's work destined to live, because here Spencer was forced to collect his data and so "get down to facts." Among scientists Darwin was Sumner's hero, as he generally is to the real scientist; his honor of Darwin is indicated, for instance, by his often expressed perplexity as to how Darwin, otherwise well-nigh impeccable, could have made a bad slip in his description of Tierra del Fuego and its inhabitants.
I feel impelled to refer in this place to the belief of some of Sumner's admirers that he made a mistake when he retired from political economy and took up the more general science of society. As well say that there is an error in the development from the blade to the ear and the full com in the ear. His obituary notices of a year ago recalled the Sumner of the seventies and eighties rather than the tranquil student of more recent years — Sumner the political economist rather than
