22 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



VIII 



Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudinous 

 attempts to apply the principles of cosmic evolu 

 tion, or what are supposed to be such, to social 

 and political problems, which have appeared of late 

 years, a considerable proportion appear to me to 

 be based upon the notion that human society is 

 competent to furnish, from its own resources, an 

 administrator of the kind I have imagined. The 

 pigeons, in short, are to be their own Sir John 

 Sebright. 1 A despotic government, whether indi 

 vidual or collective, is to be endowed with the 

 preternatural intelligence, and with what, I am 

 afraid, many will consider the preternatural ruth- 

 lessness, required for the purpose of carrying out 

 the principle of improvement by selection, with the 

 somewhat drastic thoroughness upon which the 

 success of the method depends. Experience cer 

 tainly does not justify us in limiting the ruthless- 

 ness of individual " saviours of society " ; and, on 

 the well known grounds of the aphorism which 

 denies both body and soul to corporations, it seems 

 probable (indeed the belief is not without support 

 in history) that a collective despotism, a mob got 

 to believe in its own divine right by demagogic 

 missionaries, would be capable of more thorough 



1 Not that the conception of such a society is necessarily based 

 npon the idea of evolution. The Platonic state testifies to the 

 contrary. 



