584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY '. 



with the doctrine of evolution, and impressed with the lesson it 

 teaches as to the length of time required for changes for the bet- 

 ter, discerns at " the limits of evolution," countless generations 

 hence, as goal, a system of property and contract, purified and 

 supplemented by voluntary benevolence, with the authority of 

 the state reduced to a minimum. 



In like manner Mill prophesied ; but his conclusion was dif- 

 ferent. He prophesied that co-operative production, " sooner 

 than people in general imagined," would transform society by 

 superseding the capitalist employer ; and with respect to the two 

 exactly opposite prophecies of Mill and Comte, all that need be 

 said is that neither of them has been as yet fulfilled. Co-opera- 

 tive production has not advanced, nor, on the other hand, has the 

 capitalist attained supreme political power, though of the two 

 perhaps the prophecy of Comte has come nearer to fulfillment. 



When De Tocqueville wrote his remarkable book on "De- 

 mocracy in America," the new tendency to inequality had not 

 shown itself in America, there was great equality of conditions, 

 and there was likewise considerable equality of conditions in 

 France as a consequence of the Revolution. De Tocqueville 

 generalized from what he then saw, and prophesied a further and 

 a general equality, though somewhat prematurely, because a tend- 

 ency to a prodigious inequality was setting in at the time he was 

 writing, a tendency first manifested in England, that increased, 

 spread, embraced the civilized world, that was followed by a new 

 social conquest, and the rise of a new and potent moneyed aristoc- 

 racy. It grew greater ; and, generalizing from this tendency, 

 Karl Marx prophesied it would grow still greater until all capital 

 was concentrated in a few hands ; the capitalists would then be 

 expropriated, and socialism and equality would come. But Marx, 

 as already stated, based his prophecy on a misread tendency, a 

 short tendency which had spent its full force before he died, just 

 as De Tocqueville based his prediction on a supposed tendency 

 gathered from the facts of a generation earlier. Both were 

 wrong : a great current toward inequality came, especially in 

 America, after De Tocqueville wrote, in 1835, just as there came 

 a check to the concentration of capital in fewer hands, and a tend- 

 ency to its dispersal, before Marx died. 



Others also have prophesied in our century, though without 

 pretending to base their predictions on the scientific study of 

 political or social phenomena: St. Simon, that the golden age 

 was in the future, and that society would reach it through his 

 doctrine ; Carlyle, that the abyss lay before society, unless the 

 Great Man appeared to save it. To the like effect the poet-laure- 

 ate also speaks : " Before earth reach her earthly best a God must 

 mingle with the game." 



