human
He wrote his _First Principles_ with a minimal knowledge of the philosophical classics, and his _Psychology_ as if he had been living before the invention of printing. Some one thought certain parts of his _Education_ savoured of Rousseau, but he had not heard of _Emile_ when he wrote. He was greatly indebted to von Baer for a formula, but there is no evidence that he ever read any part of the great embryologist's works. The suggestion that he was indebted to Comte for some sociological ideas might have been dismissed at once on _a priori_ grounds as absurd. And in point of fact when Spencer wrote his _Social Statics_ he knew no more of Comte than that he was a French philosophical writer, and it was not till 1853 that he began to nibble at Comte's works, to which Lewes and George Eliot had repeatedly directed his attention. He adopted two of Comte's words--
gpt
and
human
--but beyond that his indebtedness was little. We may take his own word for it:
gpt
The only indebtedness I recognise is the indebtedness of antagonism. My pronounced opposition to his views led me to develop some of my own views.