斯宾塞于1820年出生于英国的德比市，其成长经历深受父亲的影响。虽然斯宾塞的父亲、叔叔和祖父都在私立学校教书，但这位19世纪著名的大哲学家其实直到40岁时都没接受过正式的教育，他甚至幼年时期为人疏懒厌学，但这并不影响其后期所获得的巨大成就。
Herbert Spencer
II. The Development of Spencer
He was born at Derby in 1820. In both lines his ancestors were Non-conformists or Dissenters. His father's mother had been a devoted follower of John Wesley; his father's brother, Thomas, though an Anglican clergyman, led a Wesleyan movement within the Church, never attended a concert or a play, and took an active part in movements for political reform. This drive to heresy became stronger in the father, and culminated in the almost obstinate individualism of Herbert Spencer himself. The father never used the supernatural to explain anything; he was described by one acquaintance (though Herbert considered this an exaggeration) as "without faith or religion whatever, so far as one could see." He was inclined to science, and wrote an Inventional Geometry. In politics he was an individualist like his son and "would never take off his hat to anyone, no matter of what rank." "If he did not understand some question my mother put, he would remain silent; not asking what the question was, and letting it go unanswered. He continued this course all through his life, notwithstanding its futility; there resulted no improvement." One is reminded (except for the silence) of Herbert Spencer’s resistance, in his later years, to the extension of State functions.
The father, as well as an uncle and the paternal grandfather, were teachers of private schools; and yet the son, who was to be the most famous English philosopher of his century, remained till forty an uneducated man. Herbert was lazy, and the father was indulgent. At last, when he was thirteen, Herbert was sent to Hinton to study under his uncle, who had a reputation for severity. But Herbert promptly ran away from the uncle, and trudged all the way back to the paternal home at Derby—48 miles the first day, 47 the next, and 20 the third, all on a little bread and beer. Nevertheless he returned to Hinton after a few weeks, and stayed for three years. It was the only systematic schooling that he ever received. He could not say, later, just what it was he learned there; no history, no natural science, no general literature. He says, with characteristic pride: "That neither in boyhood nor youth did I receive a single lesson in English, and that I have remained entirely without formal knowledge of syntax down to the present hour, are facts which should be known; since their implications are at variance with assumptions universally accepted." At the age of forty he tried to read the Iliad but "after reading some six books I felt what a task it would be to go on—felt that I would rather give a large sum than read to the end." Collier, one of his secretaries, tells us that Spencer never finished any book of science. Even in his favorite fields he received no systematic instruction. He burnt his fingers and achieved a few explosions in chemistry; he browsed entomologically among the bugs about school and home; and he learned something about strata and fossils in his later work as a civil engineer; for the rest he picked his science casually as he went along. Until he was thirty he had no thought at all of philosophy. Then he read Lewes, and tried to pass on to Kant; but finding, at the outset, that Kant considered space and time to be forms of sense-perception rather than objective things, he decided that Kant was a dunce, and threw the book away. His secretary tells us that Spencer composed his first book, Social Statics, "having read no other ethical treatise than an old and now forgotten book by Jonathan Dymond." He wrote his Psychology after reading only Hume, Mansel and Reid; his Biology after reading only Carpenter's Comparative Physiology (and not the Origin of Species); his Sociology without reading Comte or Tylor, his Ethics without reading Kant or Mill or any other moralist than Sedgwick. What a contrast to the intensive and relentless education of John Stuart Mill!
▍语言点
Non-conformist: n. 非国教信徒
Dissenter: n. 异教徒
heresy: n. 异端
culminate in: 导致
acquaintance: n. 熟人
exaggeration: n. 夸张
individualist: n. 个人主义者
indulgent: adj. 溺爱的
reputation: n. 名誉
severity: n. 严格
promptly: adv. 及时；立刻
trudge: vi. 艰难
syntax: n. 句法
down to the present hour: 到现在这个时刻为止
entomologically: adv. 生物学地
strata: n. 地层
fossil: n. 化石
civil engineer: n. 民用工程师；土木工程师
at the outset: 一开头
dunce: n. 傻瓜
almost (口误)
obstinate (正确读音为：/'ɒbstɪnət/ /ˈɒbstɪnɪt/)
trudged (正确读音为：/trʌdʒ/)