1889 ESSAYS ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 145 



possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to 

 express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large 

 improvement of the condition of the greater part of the 

 human family ; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, 

 the winniag of a greater dominion over Nature which is 

 its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that 

 dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the 

 intensity of "Want, with its concomitant physical and 

 moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I 

 should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which 

 would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consum- 

 mation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that 

 he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that 

 the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the 

 vidture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals 

 and keep him on the brink of destruction ? 



Assuredly, if I believed that any of the schemes hitherto 

 proposed for bringing about social amelioration were 

 likely to attain their end, I should think what remains 

 to me of life well spent in furthering it. But my interest 

 in these questions did not begin the day before yesterday ; 

 and, whether right or wrong, it is no hasty conclusion of 

 mine that we have small chance of doing rightly in this 

 matter (or indeed in any other) unless we think rightly. 

 Further, that we shall never think rightly in politics 

 until we have cleared our minds of delusions, and more 

 especially of the philosophical delusions which, as I have 

 endeavoured to show, have infested political thought for 

 centuries. My main purpose has been to contribute my 

 mite towards this essential preliminary operation. Ground 

 must be cleared and levelled before a building can be 

 properly commenced ; the labour of the navvy is as 

 necessary as that of the architect, however much less 

 honoured ; and it has been my humble endeavour to grub 

 up those old stumps of the a friori which stand in the 

 way of the very foundations of a sane political philosophy. 

 To those who think that questions of the kind I have 

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