from the balance of evidence found among “primitives,” or
what he had no hesitation in describing as “the lowest races
of mankind.” Although primitive religions had, according to
Spencer, barely evolved, he believed that marks of progress
could be found in the religions of the greater civilizations,
and he tended to plot Greco-Roman and Hindu polythe-
isms, the “cruder” monotheisms of Jews and Muslims, and
the relative refinements of Catholicism and Protestantism on
an ascending scale, envisaging his own agnostic, scientific po-
sition as the pinnacle in the history of religious conscious-
ness. Apart from suggesting that history reflected progress to-
ward more mature insights and institutional complexity,
Spencer outlined the kinds of religious activity worth investi-
gation. He isolated ceremonial institutions, for example—a
category in which he placed laws of intercourse, habits and
customs, mutilations, and funeral rites, as well as ecclesiasti-
cal institutions.
Finally, his system also carried ethical implications. In
The Principles of Ethics (1879–1893), and in various social
essays (especially those in his book Education: Intellectual,
Moral, and Physical, 1861), he was seen as a liberal and an
“individualist” who opposed punitive child-rearing, narrow
biblicist morality, and state legislation that interferes in pri-
vate affairs or with the entrepreneurial spirit.
Spencer’s book sales were poor during his lifetime, and
he eked out a frugal existence as a London bachelor until he
was taken in by two elderly women in his old age. Through
the later popularization of his ideas, however, his influence
was immense, especially in the United States. His work and
that of E. B. Tylor were crucial in conditioning the wide-
spread preoccupation in English-speaking scholarship with
the evolution of religion. Always ready for a lively inter-
change with other scholars and literati, Spencer struck up
close intellectual friendships with George Eliot and her com-
panion Henry Lewes and debated with Max Müller about
mythology and the origins of religion. Spencer combined
cautious distinctions and vitriolic attacks in an attempt to
dissociate himself from Comtism and the views propounded
by Frederick Harrison, an English disciple of Auguste
Comte.
Spencer’s written approach to religion suffered from a
certain dilettantism: His knowledge of foreign languages was
limited, and his educational background provided him no
basis for the in-depth study of any single historical religion.
He barely traveled outside Great Britain, although his ency-
clopedic tendencies, as well as his ability to collect data
through travelers’ accounts and mission reports from all over
the world, made him a precursor to the armchair scholarship
associated with James G. Frazer and The Golden Bough.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the liveliest popu-
larizer of Spencer’s ideas was W. H. Hudson, and his most
cogent critic in matters of religious sociology was Émile
Durkheim. His impact has waned with the decline of social
evolutionism, but his influence on cosmological theory (that
of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for instance) and on evolu-
tion-oriented educational philosophy, especially that of John
Dewey, has been more durable.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other works by Herbert Spencer include Social Statics (1851; re-
print, New York, 1954), The Study of Sociology (London,
1873), The Man versus the State (1884; reprint, London,
1950), and An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London, 1904). There
is no monograph especially devoted to Spencer’s ideas about
religion, although one-half of my “The Origins of the Com-
parative Study of Religions” (M.A. thesis, Monash Universi-
ty, Clayton, Australia, 1967) analyzes these in depth. Of
published works on Spencer’s social theory, J. D. Y. Peel’s
Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London,
1971) and David Wiltshire’s The Social and Political Thought
of Herbert Spencer (Oxford, 1978) are the best. See also J. W.
Burrow’s Evolution and Society (London, 1966) on Spencer
in the context of British evolutionist thought as a whole; Eric
J. Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (London, 1975)
on placing Spencer in the history of the field of comparative
religion; and my “Radical Conservatism in Herbert Spencer’s
Educational Thought,” British Journal of Educational Studies
(1969): 267–280, on religious and philosophical assump-
tions underlying Spencer’s views on education.
New Sources
Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley. Bristol,
U.K., 1995.
Duncan, David. The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (1908).
London, 1996.
Fitzgerald, Timothy. “Herbert Spencer’s Agnosticism.” Religious
Studies 23 (1987): 477–491.
GARRY W. TROMPF (1987)
Revised BibliographySPENER, PHILIPP JAKOB (1635–1705), is the
most widely recognized representative of early Pietism.
Spener was born in Rappoltsweiler, Alsace, on January 13,- He grew up in a Lutheran home in which the prevail-
ing religious atmosphere was heavily influenced by Johann
Arndt’s True Christianity, the widely beloved devotional
guide of seventeenth-century Lutheranism. Thus Spener was
naturally predisposed toward Arndtian piety. Being an om-
nivorous reader, even at a tender age, he acquainted himself
early with Puritan works that had been translated into Ger-
man, as well as with those coming out of the reform party
within Lutheranism, the avowed aim of which was the fur-
therance of religious devotion and ethical sensitivity within
the Lutheran churches.
After he had completed the necessary preliminary
studies, Spener matriculated at the University of Strasbourg
in 1651. His student life manifested what was considered,
by the prevailing standards of the day, an unusually ascetic
tendency, insofar as he abstained from excessive drinking,
revelry, and generally rude behavior. The dominant intellec-
tual influence upon him during his university days was exert-
SPENER, PHILIPP JAKOB 8679