Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was one of the leading 19th-century English radical individualists. He began working as a journalist for the laissez-faire magazine The Economist in the 1850s. Much of the rest of his life was spent working on an all-encompassing theory of human development based upon the ideas of individualism, utilitarian moral theory, social and biological evolution, limited government, and laissez-faire economics.

The image comes from "The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University."

Latest work

Mises Wire Herbert Spencer
[Originally printed in Facts and Comments (1902)] Were anyone to call me dishonest or untruthful he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. “What...
Mises Daily Herbert Spencer
[This essay is taken from chapter 19 of Spencer's first major work of political philosophy— Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (1851)...
Left and Right Herbert Spencer
Education is a perennially important and controversial subject, especially in a country as child-centered as the United States. Within libertarian ranks, an unlimited diversity of viewpoint prevails...