140 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI 



their ideal ' ought to be,' they overlooked the ' what 

 has been,' the 'what is,' and the 'what can be.'" 

 " Many a long year ago," he says in Natural Rights 

 and Political Rights (i. 336), " I fondly imagined that 

 Hume and Kant and Hamilton having slain the 

 Absolute,' the thing must, in decency, decease. 

 Yet, at the present time, the same hypostatised 

 negation, sometimes thinly disguised under a new 

 name, goes about in broad daylight, in company 

 with the dogmas of absolute ethics, political and 

 other, and seems to be as lively as ever." This was 

 to his mind one of those instances of wrong thinking 

 which lead to wrong acting — the postulating a general 

 principle based upon insufficient data, and the deduc- 

 tion from it of many and far-reaching practical 

 consequences. This he had always strongly opposed. 

 His essay of 1871, "Administrative Nihilism," was 

 directed against a priori individualism ; and now he 

 proceeded to restate the arguments against a piori 

 political reasoning in general, which seemed to have 

 been forgotten or overlooked, especially by the advo- 

 cates of compulsory socialism. And here it is possible 

 to show in some detail the care he took, as was his 

 way, to refresh his knowledge and bring it up to 

 date, before writing on any special point. It is 

 interesting to see how thoroughly he went to work, 

 even in a subject with which he was already fairly 

 acquainted. As in the controversy of 1889 I find 

 a list of near a score of books consulted, so here one 

 note -book contains an analysis of the origin and 



