v The same Principles in Human Life. 67 



achieved. Open careers may tempt men to waste 

 their lives in positions for which they are unfit, yet 

 careers must be open in order that, on the whole, 

 the best men may be selected. Commercial freedom 

 may tempt men into disastrous enterprises, but 

 commerce and industry must be free in order to 

 learn, by actual trial and competition, how the 

 industry of men and nations may be most profitably 

 directed. Freedom of thought, speech, and publica- 

 tion, may lead to the dissemination of pernicious 

 error, yet such freedom is necessary to the progress 

 of thought and knowledge, and free and fair dis- 

 cussion is the only means whereby error can be 

 defeated and destroyed. In a word, it is necessary 

 that in human society there shall be full freedom, 

 within the limits of public safety, for the spontaneous 

 variation of action and thought, in order that the 

 best results may be selected and preserved by com- 

 petition, while the worthless ones perish. 1 



The truths which are the most conspicuously 

 shown in the conflict both of the organic world and 

 the world of human life and effort, are these two : 

 that improvement begins from individual centres, 

 and that progress is achieved through conflict. 

 The same principles hold in what is properly the 

 spiritual world in the secret recesses of character, 

 The abysmal deeps of personality, 2 



1 This paragraph is taken, with a little alteration and con- 

 densation, from Habit and Intelligence, 2nd edition, pp. 565, 566. 



2 Tennyson's Palace of Art. 



