CHAP, ix MR. SPENCER'S THREE DOCTRINES 93 



be in the line of militarism. There is no promise or 

 potency of a coup d'etat in the Government purchase 

 of telegraphs or even of railways. When Mr. Spencer 

 insists upon treating every civil servant as a disguised 

 soldier and secret conspirator, he does not carry our 

 convictions with him ; he only proves to us that the 

 new science is very like the old obscurantism, and that 

 you may find a perfect sample of the High Priori temper 

 in a mind wedded to familiar facts, and inaccessible to 

 unfamiliar ones. 



Mr. Spencer then has given us three ideals ; and they 

 hardly seem to agree with each other. One is an ideal 

 of progress, two of fixity ; one praises complexity, 

 another tells us that the best government is the 

 minimum of government, but that means simplicity, not 

 complexity. It is the nature of reason to invent short- 

 cuts and to retrench needless labour. The most 

 advanced is not necessarily the most elaborately 

 organised ; it is not so, if Mr. Spencer is right, in 

 society. Moreover, the sources of authority are 

 different. One appeals to the cosmic process ; one to 

 the experience and tendency of human history ; and 

 one direct to consciousness. In Martineau's language, 

 Spencer's ethics, technically so-called, are "psychological 

 ethics" though "heteropsychological." Surely we have 

 reason to fear that the promised unification of know- 

 ledge is still sadly to seek. Vast masses of knowledge 

 have been collected. They fairly bristle with sugges- 

 tions highly interesting, extremely divergent sugges- 

 tions ; but neither within the four corners of Mr. 

 Spencer's own system, nor when we bring his teaching 

 into comparison with that of other votaries of fact, do 

 we find science stilling the metaphysical strife, or giving 

 clear guidance in human things. 



