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HERBERT SPENCER

Herbert Spencer was a British philosopher. He was born in 1820 at Derby and died in 1903. Privately educated, from 1837 until 1846 he was engaged in civil engineering, and from 1848 until 1853 was sub-editor of 'The Economist'. He was the first philosopher to apply Darwinism to psychology, publishing in 1855 'Principles of Psychology' - in the same year suffering a nervous breakdown - followed in 1860 by the first prospectus of his System of Synthetic Philosophy, the first of the ten volumes of which, 'First Principles', was published in 1862, the remaining volumes occupying him for a further thirty-six years.
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