i.] ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. 7 



able, is as great a danger to society as a rocket without a 

 stick is to the people who fire it ? Misery is a match that 

 never goes out ; genius, as an explosive power, beats gun- 

 powder hollow ; and if knowledge, which should give 

 that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not 

 small that the rocket will simply run a-muck among 

 friends and foes. What gives force to the socialistic 

 movement which is now stirring European society to its 

 depths, but a determination on the part of the naturally 

 able men among the proletariat, to put an end, somehow 

 or other, to the misery and degradation in which a large 

 proportion of their fellows are steeped ? The question, 

 whether the means by which they purpose to achieve 

 this end are adequate or not, is at this moment the most 

 important of all political questions and it is beside my 

 present purpose to discuss it. All I desire to point out 

 is, that if the chance of the controversy being decided 

 calmly and rationally, and not by passion and force, 

 looks miserably small to an impartial bystander, the 

 reason is that not one in ten thousand of those who 

 constitute the ultimate court of appeal, by which ques- 

 tions of the utmost difficulty, as well as of the most 

 momentous gravity, will have to be decided, is prepared 

 by education to comprehend the real nature of the suit 

 brought before their tribunal. 



Finally, as to the ladies and gentlemen question, all I 

 can say is, would that every woman-child born into this 

 world were trained to be a lady, and every man-child a 

 gentleman! But then I do not use those much-abused 

 words by way of distinguishing people who wear fine 

 clothes, and live in fine houses, and talk aristocratic 

 slang, from those who go about in fustian, and live in 

 back slums, and talk gutter slang. Some inborn plebeian 

 blindness, in fact, prevents me from understanding what 

 advantage the former have over the latter. I have never 



