Herbert Spencer#
Summary#
Nietzsche groups Herbert Spencer with Darwin and John Stuart Mill as “respectable but mediocre Englishmen” whose influence has come to dominate middle-class European taste. These thinkers represent truths best recognized by mediocre minds, as their narrowness and “industrious carefulness” suits scientific discovery but not genuine creation. Nietzsche argues that such English minds are responsible for the plebeianism of modern ideas, contributing to a general depression of European intelligence.