Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory cooperation--the statist principle--for the individualist principle of voluntary cooperation. His theme is that "there is in society . . . that beautiful self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium. . . . The attempt to regulate all the actions of a community by legislation will entail little else but misery and compulsion."

Herbert Spencer joined the staff of the London and Birmingham Railway as an engineer in 1837 and in 1848 took a position as editor of The Economist.