《尋求富強》（In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West）一書中，史華慈（Benjamin Schwartz, 1916-1999）將嚴復（1854-1921）由西方所識得的思想思潮，放回到西方思想原典的脈絡中，比較兩方的差異差別。史華慈將焦點集中在嚴復如何解讀斯賓塞（Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903）的思想上，書中詳述、分析當自由、民主思想在現代中國起源時，一個相當獨特且不為人留意到的歷史現象，此即嚴復透過斯賓塞所理解的西方自由主義。對嚴復言之，其為西方富強的秘密之來源。而對史華慈言之，這種視自由（主義）為富強的一種工具觀，很容易地、致命地遭受來自右派、左派思潮的挑戰——只要他們提供一種更有效用的方式來達成現代性的目標。本文則力圖闡明，就斯賓塞與嚴復兩人的文本言之，嚴復乃公平與真實的理解斯賓塞，完全不似於史華慈的指控：嚴復的工具觀實際上變形歪曲了斯賓塞的核心思想。

In Search of Wealth and Power focuses on the defining difference between what Yan Fu applied categories derived from the West to Chinese culture and what Benjamin Schwartz reexamines the meaning of these categories in the original context of western culture and history. In chapters devoted to the Yan Fu’s reception of Herbert Spencer it presents and then analyzes an set of unique and unnoticed phenomena in the origin of political democracy in modern China, namely the persistent appearance of a distorted view: view implies that Yan Fu found in ideas of Western liberalism (particularly Herbert Spencer) a fundamental source of the secrets of western wealth and power. According to Schwartz, to be sure, this instrumental view of liberalism was mortally vulnerable to any challenge from both the right and the left when they offered more effective ways to achieve the goals of modernity. The present essay demonstrates how the texts produced by both Herbert Spencer and Yan Fu provides a significant resource for intellectual exchanges, in much the reverse way that what Schwartz found in Yan Fu’s thought and commitment based solely on the instrumentalism is quite deformed and distorted.