Herbert Spencer is dead. The last and greatest of the giants of the Victorian age has passed away; and, in the tumult and clamour of evanescent political strife, the country of his birth is strangely indifferent to the portentous loss that it has suffered. From the uttermost parts of the earth—from the length and breadth of the great continent of America; from France, Germany, and Italy; even from far-off Japan—come messages of condolence and appreciation of the mighty dead; but here his loss is scarcely noticed. Truly, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and among his own people. Queen Victoria was a great queen, and worthily ruled a great nation; but to distant generations the name of Queen Victoria will mean as little as the name of Semiramis means to us, while the name of Herbert Spencer will loom as large as to us does that of Aristotle. In a future which may be distant, or may be nearer than we expect, when England, after occupying for a time the position of Holland, has become a sort of Isle of Wight for honeymooning Americans, Golders Hill will share with Stratford-on-Avon the honours of a place of pilgrimage for those who desire to honour the greatest of their race. What Sir Isaac Newton achieved in co-ordinating phenomena in space, Herbert Spencer achieved in co-ordinating phenomena in time. His task was almost superhuman, yet through ridicule and neglect at first, and at last in spite of the affectation of prigs, who feigned that his teaching was obsolete, he kept steadily to his task; devoting his life with wonderful purity of purpose to the completion of his great system of philosophy. He began in spite of scorn and ridicule; he lived to see his philosophy well-nigh universally accepted; and he lived to see it sneered at as antiquated by writers with less than a tithe of his knowledge, and with not a twentieth part the tithe of his intellect. He heaved Germany out of the slough of Hegelianism, only to see his own countrymen plunge and wallow in the same mire—to see them, as they struggled against asphyxiation, affect a sublime superiority over those who stood dry upon the bank, with limbs unhampered and breathing unobstructed.

The case of Miss Hickman appears a very mysterious one in the light of the facts which have become known. An able, sane, sensible, athletic young woman, in the prime of life, and with no known antecedents of mental disorder, a qualified medical practitioner, holding a temporary hospital appointment, leaves the hospital one summer morning without notice, and is never seen or heard of again until her decomposed body is found, two months afterwards, hidden away in a thicket in Richmond Park. The evidence of suicide was conclusive, and at once an hypothesis is mooted that the responsibility of her position weighed so heavily upon her as to unhinge her mind. On this hypothesis is founded a further thesis concerning the unfitness of women to hold positions of responsibility, and especially their unfitness for the profession of medicine. Whether women are unfit to practise medicine need not be discussed here, but it is as well to point out the fatuity of the hypothesis on which the thesis is grounded. Apart from such instances as those of Queen Victoria and Catherine II, which go to show that certain women, at any rate, are capable of holding positions of responsibility even greater than that of house surgeon to a hospital, there is no evidence that Miss Hickman felt her responsibility unduly. As has often been pointed out in another part of this Journal, we are far too apt to speak of crimes as “motiveless” when all we are justified in saying is that we cannot discern an adequate motive for them. We have no surety that we know all the facts, and if all the facts were as well known to us as to the actors in these dramas, the probability is that the number of “motiveless” acts would be sensibly diminished. Every one of us has an outer life, known to all our associates, and an inner life, the whole of which is known to ourselves alone, though glimpses of it may be imparted to intimate confidential friends. To those who know our outer life only, many of our acts may, nay must, appear “motiveless,” although they may have been done after mature deliberation and consultation with our confidants; and if the whole of the inner life were known, it is probable that the residuum of “motiveless” acts would be very small.