SPECULATIVE, THE, that which we think and which as such goes no deeper than the intellect, which is but the eye of the soul, not the heart of it.  See SPIRITUAL, THE.

SPEDDING, JAMES, editor of Bacon, born at Mirehouse, near Keswick, son of a Cumberland squire; scholar and honorary Fellow of Cambridge; became in 1847 Under-Secretary of State with L2000 a year; devoted his life to the study of Bacon, the fruit of which the “Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, including all his Occasional Works, newly selected and set forth with a Commentary, Biographical and Historical,” in 7 vols.; a truly noble man, and much esteemed by his contemporaries in literature (1808-1881).

SPEKE, JOHN BANNING, African explorer, born in Somersetshire; became a soldier, and served in the Punjab; joined Burton in 1854 in an expedition into Somaliland, and three years after in an attempt to discover the sources of the Nile, and setting out alone discovered Victoria Nyanza, which he maintained was the source of the river, but which Burton questioned; on his return he published in 1863 an account of his discovery, which he was about to defend in the British Association when he was shot by the accidental discharge of his gun while he was out hunting (1827-1864).

SPENCE, JOSEPH, a miscellaneous writer, born in Hants; educated at and a Fellow of Oxford; his principal work, “Polymetis; or, an Inquiry into the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists”; his “Anecdotes” are valuable from his acquaintance with the literary class of the time, and have preserved his name (1699-1768).

SPENCER, HERBERT, systematiser and unifier of scientific knowledge up to date, born at Derby, son of a teacher, who early inoculated him with an interest in natural objects, though he adopted at first the profession of a railway engineer, which in about eight years he abandoned for the work of his life by way of literature, his first effort being a series of “Letters on the Proper Sphere of Government” in the Nonconformist in 1842, and his first work “Social Statics,” published in 1851, followed by “Principles of Psychology” four years after; in 1861 he published a work on “Education,” and his “First Principles” the following year, after which he began to construct his system of “Synthetic Philosophy,” which fills a dozen large volumes, and has established his fame as the foremost scientific philosopher of the time.  Following in the lines of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, he takes a wider sweep than either of them, fills the field he occupies with fuller and riper detail, resolves the whole of science into still more ultimate principles, and works the whole up into a more compact and comprehensive system.  He is valiant before all for science, and relegates everything and every interest to Agnosticism that cannot give proof of its scientific rights.  “What a thing is in itself,” he says, “cannot be known, because to know it we must strip it of all