Spencer, despite the frequently able use of the generalisations of
biology, themselves somewhat lacked the first-hand observation of the
city and community around them, and suffered thereby; this part of their
work obviously not being on a level with the historic interpretations of
the one or the psychological productivity of the other. And if, without
warlike intent, I may yet strike a conspicuous shield or two within
these friendly lists, is it not this one element of concrete observation
and illustration which is sometimes lacking to give its full effect to
the encyclopædic learning and the sympathetic insight of one of our
recent papers, to the historic and poetic interpretations of another, or
to the masterly logic of a third?

Before the polemics of our educationists, the voluminous argumentation
and casuistic subtlety of our professors of economics and ethics, yet
more before the profound speculations of the epistemologists, the mere
naturalist observer can but feel abashed like the truant before his
schoolmasters; yet he is also not without a certain deep inward
conviction, born of experience, that his outdoor world is yet more real,
more vast, and more instructive than is theirs. And this impression
becomes strengthened, nay verified and established, when he sees that
the initiative thinkers from whom these claim to descend, have had in
each and every case no merely academic record, but also a first-hand
experience, an impulse and message from life and nature. Hence the
contributions of Locke, of Comenius, and of Rousseau. Hence the
Physiocrats found economics in peasant life; and thus too Adam Smith
renewed their science, with due academic logic, doubtless, but from his
experience of Glasgow and Kirkcaldy manufactures and trade. Even the
idealist Berkeley owed much of his theory to his iridescent tar-water;
while surely the greater ethicists are those who have not only been
dialecticians, but moral forces in the world of men.