56 INTRODUCTION 



or no sanction in modern thought, is the first com- 

 mandment of Natural Religion. 



The sociologist has grievously complained of late 

 that he could get but little help from science. The 

 suggestions of Bagehot, the Synthetic Philosophy 

 of Herbert Spencer, the proposals of multitudes of 

 the followers of the last who announced the re- 

 demption of the world the moment they discovered 

 the " Social Organism," raised great expectations. 

 But somehow they were not fulfilled. Mr. Spencer's 

 work has been mainly to give this century, and 

 in part all time, its first great map of the field. 

 He has brought all the pieces on the board, 

 described them one by one, defined and explained 

 the game. But what he has failed to do with 

 sufficient precision, is to pick out the King and 

 Queen. And because he has not done so, some 

 men have mistaken his pawns for kings ; others 

 have mistaken the real kings for pawns ; every 

 is7n has found endorsement in his pages, and 

 men have gathered courage for projects as hostile 

 to his whole philosophy as to social order. Theories 

 of progress have arisen without any knowledge of 

 its laws, and the ordered course of things has 

 been done violence to by experiments which, unless 

 the infinite conservatism of Nature had neutralized 

 their evils, had been a worse disaster than they 



