London in a home "with a lively circle," and pursued his calling as a thinker with quiet resolution. He had Sunday afternoon walks and talks with Huxley, and he occasionally dined out to meet interesting people such as Buckle and Grote; but the tenor of his life was uninterrupted by much incident. In this year he published a volume of essays new and old, Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative; and this was probably in part responsible for a great unification in Spencer's thought. It was in the beginning of 1858 that he made the first sketch of his System, and on the 9th of January he wrote to his father as follows: "Within the last ten days my ideas on various matters have suddenly crystallised into a complete whole. Many things which were before lying separate have fallen into their places as harmonious parts of a system that admits of logical development from the simplest general principles."

In this annus mirabilis (1858) when Darwin and Wallace read their papers at the Linnæan Society expounding the idea of Natural Selection, Spencer was also thinking keenly along evolutionary lines. He ventured on a defence of the Nebular Hypothesis and a criticism of Owen's Vertebral Theory of the Skull; and he was working at the question of the form and symmetry of animals, which he interpreted as "determined by the relations of the parts to incident forces." Vigorous as he was in his intelligence, he was still unable to work for more than about three hours a day, and his pecuniary prospects were dismal. In view of his determination to go on working out his System, it was a fortunate chance that led him in an emergency to discover that he could greatly increase his productivity by dictating instead of writing.

Spencer made various efforts (1859-60) to secure some Government appointment which would afford him a steady income and yet leave him free for his life-work, but as nothing came of these, he went on quietly with his essay-writing, with many pleasant holidays interspersed, and produced his "Illogical Geology," "The Social Organism," "Prison Ethics," "The Physiology of Laughter," and so on.

Settling to his life-work.—Baffled in other plans, he at length organised a scheme of publishing his projected series of volumes by subscription. His influential friends headed the list and four hundred names were soon secured in Britain; the disinterested energy of an American admirer, Prof. E. S. Youmans, raised the total to six hundred. And thus Spencer, at the age of forty, handicapped by lack of means and health, calmly sat down to a task which was calculated to occupy him for twenty years.... "To think that an amount of mental exertion great enough to tax the energies of one in full health and vigour, and at his ease in respect of means, should be undertaken by one who, having only precarious resources, had become so far a nervous invalid that he could not with any certainty count upon his powers from one twenty-four hours to another! However, as the result proved, the apparently unreasonable hope was entertained, if not wisely, still fortunately. For though the whole of the project has not been executed, yet the larger part of it has." In one form of faith Spencer was in no wise lacking.