5 1 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



remedies which, we apply to cure it. It is hardly too much to say 

 that human improvement is due to the evils and difficulties of life 

 overcome in the right way. 



One last word. Men doubt about " absolute political ethics." 

 Yet they do not doubt about absolute principles in physics, in 

 chemistry, in biology, in psychology, or even in the ethics of pri- 

 vate life. Does it never strike them that it is a mightily strange 

 thing requiring, I think, some explanation on their part to which 

 they do not often condescend that we should live in this world 

 almost surrounded by order, or fixed law, on every side of us, and 

 yet in one special department of it that of political action this 

 order should suddenly he replaced "by disorder and uncertainty ? 

 Does it never occur to them that this strange inexplicable contra- 

 diction may be not in nature, but possibly only in their own 

 minds ? Does it never occur to Prof. Huxley, who is not an ad- 

 mirer, I suspect, of our party warfares, that the danger of modern 

 civilization, the unscrupulousness, the corruption, the cowardice, 

 the shiftiness, the untrue motives that flourish in public life have 

 their stronghold in this belief that politics are an Alsatia, where 

 alone in the wide universe the writ of the Great Power does not 

 run ? Does he not see that as long as politics are held to he out- 

 side moral law and scientific statement so long we shall he at 

 the mercy of all those who for their own purpose try to persuade 

 the people to believe the ignoble creed that whatever they desire 

 is right, that the measure of their wants is the measure of the just 

 and true ? Some day, when possibly men may have forgotten 

 "the heavy lesson" my friend Mr. Greenwood addresses to the 

 philosophers, they may, warned by the great social dangers press- 

 ing upon them, turn round and see the full meaning of Mr. Spen- 

 cer's work, and understand that he alone has pointed to them the 

 path that leads out of the wilderness. 



May I say that I am always glad to send some of our individ- 

 ualist tracts to any person who writes to me ? 



I am, very faithfully, Auberon Herbert. 



Old-House, Ringwood, November 14th. 



MR. GREENWOOD'S SECOND LETTER. 



To the Editor of "The Times " : 



Sir : If the question is whether Mr. Herbert Spencer is right 

 in endeavoring to purify the conduct of public affairs and dis- 

 charge it of error by establishing a system of " absolute political 

 ethics, or that which ought to be," I submit that he need not have 

 said so much as he has lately said in your columns. Who doubts 

 that he is right ? Who doubts that he is wisely and nobly em- 

 ployed when his business is to discover the bases of true political 

 morality, and to exhort mankind never to lose sight of them, what- 



