84 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book i possible castle in the air. But the demolition and 

 exposure of these mischievous and miserable fallacies 

 shall not be entrusted only to the arguments that 

 have been brought to bear on them. The validity 

 of these arguments shall now be finally substantiated 

 by direct appeal to a sociologist whose identity may 

 surprise the reader. This is none other than Mr. 

 Spencer himself, who, when he forgets to be the 

 conscious expositor of his theory, and turns aside 

 to illustrate some particular point by examples 

 drawn from the experience of common life, is con- 

 stantly contradicting, in a most remarkable but 

 entirely unconscious way, the fundamental principle 

 which he has deliberately set himself to establish. 

 And, curiously In the seventh chapter of his Study of Sociology, 

 s^nSru^con- being incidentally concerned to insist on the iniquity 

 sciousiy admits an( j j^g m ischievousness of war, he describes how 

 Europe, during the earlier years of this century, 

 was visited by certain disasters, far-reaching and 

 horrible, from the consequence of which the world has 

 hardly yet recovered. These disasters consisted of 

 slaughter, plunder, pestilence, agony, rape, and ruin ; 

 and to say nothing of their results on those whom 

 they left alive, they resulted in some two million 

 He declares violent and unnecessary deaths. And how does Mr. 

 Spencer explain these appalling phenomena ? He 

 declares that we should learn nothing about 



maleficent social causation " should we read ourselves blind over 



greatness of 



Napoleon. the biographies " of all the great rulers of the world, 

 explains them by tracing them to one sole and 

 single cause; and this, he says, was the genius 



