From Herbert Spencer^{1, 2}

13 Loudoun Road | St John’s Wood

My dear Tyndall,

Had not the announcement of coffee prevented, I had hoped to carry much further the discussion we commenced on Saturday evening.³ Lest you should misunderstand me, let me briefly say now what I wished to say.

In the first place I fully recognize, and have all along recognized, the tendency to ultimate equilibrium; and have, after sundry other chapters on the general laws of change, a final one entitled ‘he Equilibration of Force’.⁴ Indeed of the general views which I have of late years been working out this was oddly enough the first reached. Among memoranda jotted down for a second edition of ‘Social Statics’,⁵—memoranda written toward the close of 51 or early in 52—I have some bearing on this law in its application to society. Seeking, as I had been doing, for a deeper basis for the principles of equity set forth in that book, I had arrived at this as the ultimate. The universal tendency towards equilibrium must apply to human actions as well as to others. All our hourly doings are endeavours to equilibrate our acts and wants. Those modifications of faculty which we are ever undergoing are a continuous approximation to equilibrium between constitution and conditions. So long as desires and their satisfactions are not balanced there must be change either by the abatement of the desire or the obtainment of the satisfactions. That is, there must be change until equilibration is reached. This applies to man in his social relations. Society must go on changing until all men’s constitutions and their circumstances are in correspondence—until the desires of each are such only as may be gratified without thwarting the desire of others. That is, change must continue until all men are organically just—until none have any desires at variance with the welfare of others. And thus the moral law that ‘Every man is free to do whatever he will provided he does not trench upon the equal freedom of others’ (which it is the aim of ‘Social Statics’ to establish) is necessarily the law of the ultimate social state. Thus you see that my views commit me most fully to the doctrine of ultimate equilibration.

That which was new to me in your position enunciated last June, and again on Saturday, was that equilibration was death. Regarding as I had done, equilibration as the ultimate and highest state of society, I had assumed it to be not only the ultimate but also the highest state of the universe. And your assertion that when equilibrium was reached life must cease, staggered me. Indeed, not seeing my way out of the conclusion, I remember being out of spirits for some days afterwards. I still feel unsettled about the matter and should like some day to discuss it with you.

Let me further say that you must not take the views put forth in the articles on Progress and Physiology⁶ as anything more than rude, misshapen germs. During the past year they have been undergoing a development which I never anticipated; and the ideas at present published seem to me to stand towards a true theory much as an egg does to a bird, or an Amphioxus⁷ to a man. Indeed it is the wide and rapid evolution which these (and some connate ideas) have been undergoing, and the power which I see they have of absorbing and organizing all I had before thought, which renders me so anxious to get the opportunity of working them out.

ever yours truly | Herbert Spencer

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