HERBERT SPENCER 29 



it is continually done. But the remarkable thing is, that only 

 ten years later, in his volume on " Justice," the writer of this 

 letter should have so far changed his opinions as to arrive 

 ultimately at the conclusion thus stated : " A fuller considera- 

 tion of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual 

 ownership, subject to State suzerainty, should be maintained. ,, 

 Those who care to understand what were the supposed facts 

 leading to this most impotent conclusion, will find them stated 

 and exposed in vol. ii., chap, xviii. of my " Studies." 1 They 

 were first given in an address to the Land Nationalization 

 Society in 1892. 



A few months later he wrote to me again on the land ques- 

 tion, in reply to my recommendation of Henry George's book 

 " Progess and Poverty," and this letter, as exhibiting his ideas 

 on human progress generally, and also his somewhat hasty 

 judgments on particular writers, seems well worthy of pres- 

 ervation, and I therefore give it verbatim. 



"38 Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, July 6, 1881. 



" Dear Mr. Wallace, 



" I have already seen the work you name — ' Progress 

 and Poverty ' ; having had a copy, or rather two copies, sent me. 

 I gathered, from what little I glanced at, that I should funda- 

 mentally disagree with the writer, and have not read more. 



" I demur entirely to the supposition, which is implied in 

 the book that, by any possible social arrangements whatever, 

 the distress which humanity has had to suffer in the course of 

 civilization could have been prevented. The whole process, 

 with all its horrors and tyrannies, and slaveries and abomi- 

 nations of all kinds, has been an inevitable one accompanying 

 the survival and spread of the strongest, and the consolidation 

 of small tribes into large societies ; and among other things, 

 the lapse of land into private ownership has been, like the 



1 H. Spencer's treatment of the land question in this work is criti- 

 cised and controverted in great detail by Henry George in " A Per- 

 plexed Philosopher," published in 1893. Neither H. Spencer nor any 

 of his disciples have refuted these destructive criticisms. 



