the courage and enthusiasm of his opinions about, is the unsoundness of the political theories of Rousseau, which nobody now reads; the theological absurdity of Mr. Henry George, who is followed only by untrained reformers; and the mental and physical inequality of men, which nobody ever denied. But when it comes to acting on the recognition of the "problem of problems,” to counselling the people on how they may achieve the restraint of over-population, which is the one “ social arrangement by which Want can be permanently eliminated,” then the pragmatist has

no opinion to offer.” It is the final expression of his essentially negative mind, which kept him denying evolution till the proofs were sufficient to stagger even bigots; set him controverting Spencer's so-called Nihilism without indicating a notion of what ought to be really done; and kept him opposing the exclusion of superstition from the schools, till he was fain himself to make a stand in order to exclude it from the forum. Thus may you contrive to have it formally on record that you were right, while the upshot of your career remains negation or practical nullity. I for one have small thanks to offer to a publicist who at the eleventh hour announces his agreement with those who proclaim that increase of population is the problem of problems, and then contentedly leaves those who will to bell the cat and take the odium of educative propaganda ; proceeding to concentrate his own polemical powers on endless and laboriously sarcastic controversy about the miracle of the devils and the swine, after its significance has become a standing commonplace for artisan Secularists. Professor Huxley affects to meet protests against his pragmatism by suggesting that the crossing-sweeper fulfils his function in clearing the path. Well, the figure was sufficiently unfortunate; for the London crossing-sweeper's labour is, as a rule, visibly a vain display, a factitious sweeping of the already-swept, while acres of mud lie around, or an officious show of cleansing where there is no dirt. And if Professor Huxley is satisfied to be a crossing-sweeper in sociology, he must be content to have the distinction of such an

X.

A criticism of Spencer in a constructive and not a pragmatic spirit, starting from the Neo-Malthusian position, will supply a practical and not merely a formal answer to his Nihilistic protests. It is true that our legislators have made multitudes of useless and even injurious laws, just because they have never honestly faced the population problem. As in Spencer's own excellent illustration, they have struck directly at the bulge in the iron plate.

“You see,” he writes in The Study of Sociology, “ that this wroughtiron plate is not quite flat : it sticks up a little here towards the leftcockles,' as we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well, here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow as you advise. Harder, you say. Still, no effect. Another stroke? Well, there is one, and another and another. The pro. minence remains, you see; the evil is as great as ever-greater, indeed. But this is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty bungle we have made of it. Instead of curing the original defect we have produced a second. Had we asked an artisan practised in planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. He would have taught us how to give variously-directed and specially-adjusted blows with a hammer elsewhere : so attacking the evil not by direct but by indirect actions. The required process is less simple than you thought. Even a sheet of metal is not to be successfully dealt with after those common-sense methods in which you have so much confidence. What, then, shall we say about a society? Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?' asks Hamlet. Is humanity more readily straightened than an iron plate ?”

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An excellent illustration, indeed. But observe its significance. There is, on this admission, a way of straightening humanity, if you can find it. But where in Mr. Spencer's latter-day doctrine is that way hinted at ? Why, even in The Study of Sociology we are as good as told that we must leave our crooked iron plate to the action of the atmosphere and its own molecular forces. It < is true that mere prohibitive legislation does next to nothing to

put down drunkenness ; it is true that Building Acts have not
stopped jerry-building; and that Acts regulating industry often
become a dead letter, as an Eight Hours Law will be, if we get it.
But is there no way of improving warped society : is there not a
Social Dynamics as well as a Social Statics ? The old notion of
nationalisation of land : would that not be an efficient blow-if
only we could at the same time control population ? · The reduc-
tion of the National Debt, to the end of removing a great burden
from industry, would that not be a well-directed stroke? The
socialisation of public monopoly profits, as those of railways, banks,
gas-works, water-works, would that be a mere bungler's blow on
the bulge? Yes, answers the latter-day Spencer; the socialisation
of public monopoly profits, by any means whatever, is only a step
towards “ the coming slavery." +
<See now the ethical and social attitude to which the sociologist
has progressed. He has formulated a doctrine of Absolute and
Relative Ethics, which, applied to politics, seems to come to this :
That Absolute Ethics prescribes imperatively certain primary
functions, negatively regulative, on the part of the State-pro-
teotions against murder, robbery, violence, fraud, and breach of
contract—as being absolutely right; while beyond those pro-
tections we are in the sphere of Relative Ethics, which is a matter
of choosing between different evils or inconveniences. It is ab-
solutely right, and cannot possibly do harm, to give those primary
protections, as it is absolutely right for a mother to nourish her
child even at a sacrifice to herself; but there is a point at which
her self-sacrifice on behalf of the growing child might do more
harm than it would prevent: and as this point is approached the
question becomes one of Relative Ethics.
(I submit that the use of the terms Absolute and Relative in
this distinction is illicit, and a hindrance to right perception of

i See The Man versus the State, p. 38.

2 I give this as what seems to me a fair practical statement of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of Absolute and Relative Ethics, which, however, it is almost impossible to reduce to a distinct proposition. See The Data of Ethics, ch. xv.—and compare Mr. Collins' valuable Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy, pp. 541-3.

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the issues. By Ethics we mean the co-ordinated rules for right social conduct, and either all of these rules are absolute or all are relative. When it is a case of choosing between two evils, there is as truly an absolute duty to take the best course as there is an absolute duty to do what is obviously right in any other. The terms are irrelevant : the distinction would properly be between immediate and contingent, or primary and secondary expediencies. Now, we know historically that the social or governmental functions which Mr. Spencer prescribes as absolute, though their necessity is more readily apparent than that of the functions he would disallow, were themselves only gradually assumed ; and that civilisation has been a progress from merely mutual individual check on self-assertion to the establishment of certain collective checks, more or less efficiently carried out. For a long time even murder was not restrained by collective action ; and the resort to collective action in that case was a process which would in Mr. Spencer's terminology come within the sphere of Relative Ethics, since it came of a gradual recognition that the evils of retaliation and feud were greater than the evils of judicial costs and the burdens of social machinery. That is the formula of all political movement. As Mr. Spencer sufficiently indicates, there is no true limit conceivable to the development of conviction as to the ethical necessity or expediency of a given collective function: the question is simply one of right choosing in successively perceived emergencies. And it is becoming very evident that in relation to many of us Mr. Spencer stands in the position which was doubtless taken up by early Conservatives in opposition to the reformers who sought to bring about the collective punishment of murder and theft. He has become reconciled to

the private ownership of the land, which he once felt, and which ?. we now feel, to be unjust and inexpedient. He is grown acutely

conscious of the evils of mistaken legislation, and of regulative machinery which limits the freedom of a minority of the citizens ; but he has now apparently no eye at all for such evils as the existence of an increasing idle class, who get the best of all things while doing nothing for them, and whose existence is thus a plain limitation to the freedom and the well-being of the greater part of the community. He dwells on the burden of taxation laid on the ratepayers, but he would remain tolerant of the ultimate incidence of all burdens on labour, and of the allotment of the minimum ration to the man whose work is hardest.

Thousands of years ago, sociologists say that social inequality, the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few, was fatal to the endurance of States, and many attempts were made to check the tendency. It is incredible that Mr. Spencer does not in theory recognise the evil; but when he now meets with even a well-considered attempt to obviate it, by the municipalisation of public monopolies, his one thought is, not satisfaction at the socialisation of income which otherwise enriched a few and helped to extend the idle class, but alarm at the limitation of freedom which he takes to be implied in the extension of social machinery-this without asking whether the freedom that is limited is not of the kind which “ Absolute Ethics” would disallow. He has come to sympathise actively with the class who, under existing arrangements, gets the plums in the cake, and only passively with the rest of the community; and when he is talking of the citizen and the ratepayer he is thinking not of the many but of the few. He actually applies to the mass of the poor the maxim : “He that will not work neither shall he eat," as if poverty mostly came of unwillingness to work; and as if the people with large incomes were usually the hardest workers. 1 Opposing those windy Socialists who propose instant confiscation of the railways, he speaks as if all the present shareholders were men who had originally risked their property to create the lines; and wholly evades the question whether it is expedient that the descendants and successors of these men

i The Man versus the State, p. 19. In this connection it is only fair to note that the philosopher has been angrily contemplating the tribe of loafers, and is not directly speaking of unemployed workers in general. But he has no right to generalise as he does even about the apparent loafers ; and his talk about “the law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die,” is a strange evasion of the plainest social facts. Thousands in the richest classes are “not energetic enough to maintain themselves” independently of their unearned endowments.

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