Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (April 27, 1820 – December 8, 1903) was an English philosopher and prominent liberal political theorist. He was a defender of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and coined the terms "the Survival of the Fittest" and "the Descent of Man." Spencer, like many scientists of the time, was a deist, which is to say he did not believe in God per se, but only in a god. Eventually, Spencer rejected God altogether and became an agnostic.

Spencer is largely remembered today for his theories of social Darwinism, the idea that Darwinist evolutionary ideas applied to people as well as objects. Social Darwinism reached its political zenith in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. It is mostly discredited today.

Herbert Spencer died of poor health in 1903. He asked to be buried in the Highgate Cemetery of London so that he would be facing the grave of Karl Marx, the well-known Communist atheist political figure. A fair number of people travel each year to pay their respects to Marx and Spencer.