3 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dealt with. When I thus distinguished between groups of individuals hav- 

 ing widely different sets of faculties, and groups of individuals having 

 similar sets of faculties (constituting their common human nature), I never 

 imagined that by speaking of these last as having approximately equal 

 capacities, in contrast with the first as having extremely unequal ones, I 

 might be supposed to deny that any considerable differences existed among 

 these last. Mr. Mallock, however, detaching this passage from its context, 

 represents it as a deliberate characterization to be thereafter taken for 

 granted ; and, on the strength of it, ascribes to me the absurd belief that 

 there are no marked superiorities and inferiorities among men ! or, that if 

 there are, no social results flow from them ! * 



Though I thought it well thus to repudiate the absurd belief 

 ascribed to me, I did not think it well to enter upon a discussion of 

 Mr. Mallock's allegations at large. He says I ought to have given 

 to the matter " more than the partial and inconclusive attention he 

 has [I have] bestowed upon it." Apparently he forgets that if a 

 writer on many subjects deals in full with all who challenge his 

 conclusions, he will have time for nothing else; and he forgets that 

 one who, at the close of life, has but a small remnant of energy left, 

 while some things of moment remain to be done, must as a rule leave 

 assailants unanswered or fail in his more important aims. Now, 

 however, that Mr. Mallock has widely diffused his misinterpretations, 

 I feel obliged, much to my regret, to deal with them. He will find 

 that my reply does not consist merely of a repudiation of the 

 absurdity he ascribes to me. 



The title of his book is a misnomer. I do not refer to the fact 

 that the word " Aristocracy," though used in a legitimate sense, is 

 used in a sense so unlike that now current as to be misleading: that 

 is patent. Nor do I refer to the fact that the word " Evolution," 

 covering, as it does, all orders of phenomena, is wrongly used when 

 it is applied to that single group of phenomena constituting Social 

 Evolution. But I refer to the fact that his book does not concern 

 Social Evolution at all: it concerns social life, social activity, social 

 prosperity. Its facts bear somewhat the same relation to the facts 

 of Social Evolution as an account of a man's nutrition and physical 

 welfare bears to an account of his bodily structure and functions. 



In an essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," published in 1857, 

 containing an outline of the doctrine which I have since elaborated 

 in the ten volumes of Synthetic Philosophy, I commenced by point- 

 ing out defects in the current conception of progress. 



It takes in not so much the reality of Progress as its accompaniments — 

 not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence 

 seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the 



* Literature, April 2, 1898. 



