虽然斯宾塞直到40岁时都没接受过正式的教育，但他对事物的敏锐观察和强烈的好奇心让他获得了海量知识的积累，从而被那些同样没有“文化”的工人、商人们追捧。斯宾塞的想法偏于务实，喜欢发明创造，这在他的自传中都有提及。
Herbert Spencer
II. The Development of Spencer
Where, then, did he find those myriad facts with which he propped up his thousand arguments? He "picked them up," for the most part, by direct observation rather than by reading. "His curiosity was ever awake, and he was continually directing the attention of his companion to some notable phenomenon . . . until then seen by his eyes alone." At the Athenaeum Club he pumped Huxley and his other friends almost dry of their expert knowledge; and he ran through the periodicals at the Club as he had run through those that passed through his father’s hands for the Philosophical Society at Derby, "lynx-eyed for every fact that was grist to his mill." Having determined what he wanted to do, and having found the central idea, evolution, about which all his work would turn, his brain became a magnet for relevant material, and the unprecedented orderliness of his thought classified the material almost automatically as it came. No wonder the proletaire and the business man heard him gladly; here was just such a mind as their own—a stranger to book-learning, innocent of "culture" and yet endowed with the natural, matter-of-fact knowledge of the man who learns as he works and lives.
For he was working for his living: and his profession intensified the practical tendency of his thought. He was surveyor, supervisor and designer of railway lines and bridges, and in general an engineer. He dripped inventions at every turn; they all failed, but he looked back upon them, in his Autobiography, with the fondness of a father for a wayward son; he sprinkled his reminiscent pages with patent salt-cellars, jugs, candle-extinguishers, invalid-chairs, and the like. As most of us do in youth, he invented new diets too; for a time he was vegetarian; but he abandoned it when he saw a fellow-vegetarian develop anemia, and himself losing strength: "I found that I had to rewrite what I had written during the time I was a vegetarian, because it was so wanting in vigor." He was ready in those days to give everything a trial; he even thought of migrating to New Zealand, forgetting that a young country has no use for philosophers. It was characteristic of him that he made parallel lists of reasons for and against the move, giving each reason a numerical value. The sums being 110 points for remaining in England and 301 for going, he remained.
▍语言点
notable: adj. 明显的
pump...dry: 抽干；榨
periodical: n. 期刊；杂志
grist: vt. 磨碎
mill: n. 磨盘
proletaire: n. 老百姓
innocent: adj. 天真的；一无所知的
endow: vt. 赋予
surveyor: n. 测量员
supervisor: n. 监督员
drip: vt. 撒落
Autobiography: n. 自传
wayward: adj. 专横的；任性的
sprinkle: vt. 四散飘零
salt-cellar: n. 盐罐
jug: n. 壶
candle-extinguisher: n. 灭烛器
invalid-chair: n. 残疾人用的轮椅
diet: n. 饮食方式
vegetarian: n. 素食主义者
anemia: n. 贫血症
vigor: n. 活力
trial: n. 尝试
parallel: adj. 平行的
numerical value: 分值
Athenaeum (正确读音为：/ˌæθ əˈni əm/)
Huxley (正确读音为：/ˈhʌksli/)
stranger (口误)
anemia (正确读音为：/əˈniːmiə/)
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