How the volume asks to be read

Spencer’s preface says the manuscript refused a straight academic order. The chapters jump — Bible, Hollywood, linguistics, philosophy, politics, antiquity — and then return. He calls the shape Nietzschean in the episodic sense: peak to peak, until a landscape appears. He also says it is not a set of one-offs. The editing was meant to tie the threads.

The book is divided into three parts: Groundwork, Ancients & Moderns, and Cults and Culture. Inside each part the chapters are numbered. A parenthesis such as (I, §3) means part I, chapter 3. The preface tells the reader to follow those marks rather than treat each chapter as finished on its own.

He is explicit that the book should be read from front to back, and equally explicit that the reader has to decide whether the pieces make one picture. The method on offer is a lens, REM, not a closed history. This site follows that order and does not substitute a summary for the reading.