LETTERS ON THE LAND QUESTION 509 



mine could afford the smallest pretext for the amount of man- 

 slaughter of which that man would be guilty, I should be grieved 

 indeed. Mr. Spencer could not have chosen a better illustration 

 of the gulf fixed between his way of thinking and mine. When- 

 ever physiology (including pathology), pharmacy, and hygiene 

 are perfect sciences, I have no doubt that the practice of medicine 

 will be deducible from the first principles of these sciences. That 

 happy day has not arrived yet, and I fancy it is not likely to ar- 

 rive for some time. But, until it comes, no practitioner who is 

 sensible of the profound responsibility which attaches to his 

 office, or, I may say, is sane, will dream of treating cholera or 

 small-pox by deduction from such mere physiological principles 

 as are at present well established. And if this is so, what is to be 

 said of the publicist, who, undertaking to preserve the health and 

 heal the diseases of an organism vastly more complicated than the 

 human body, seeks guidance, not from the safe, however limited, 

 inductions based on careful observation and experience, but puts 

 his faith in long chains of deduction from abstract ethical assump- 

 tions, hardly any link of which can be tested experimentally ? 



No doubt a great many foolish laws are passed. Also a great 



many foolish prescriptions are written ; but the latter fact is not 



evidence in favor of " absolute physiological medicine," any more 



than the former testifies to the value of " absolute political ethics." 



I am, sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley. 



Eastbourne, November 15th. 



MR. HERBERT'S LETTER. 



To the Editor of " The Times " : 



Sir : I more than suspect that my friend Mr. Greenwood can 

 not have escaped a few moments' quiet amusement the other 

 morning when he read his own letter in " The Times." Mr. 

 Spencer, after many years, slowly and cautiously modifies a view 

 formed earlier in life, and Mr. Greenwood thereupon addresses to 

 the whole body of philosophers, to make use of his own words, " a 

 heavy lesson." When, currents calamo, he took the philosophers 

 under his charge for the purposes of instruction, did it never occur 

 to him to ask himself how many oracles of his own it is the fate 

 of the most careful editor be he who he may in the course of 

 even one short year of political warfare to recall and silently re- 

 place by their opposites ? The philosophers may have their faults, 

 but I am afraid they are hardly to be convicted of them by any 

 one who has, closely or remotely, independently or subserviently, 

 followed the zigzags of political life. 



And now as regards the question itself. There are some of us 

 who have been watching for years with great pleasure the growing 

 change in Mr. Spencer's views about land, and have only wished 



