I 5 6 



ARISTOCRACY AND EVOLUTION 



thus employed, really require minute and careful 

 discussion, and have really a direct bearing on the 

 practical problems of the day are the domain of 

 economic production and the domain of political 

 government. These, indeed, may be said to contain 

 between them the whole of the questions with regard 

 to which parties are divided with regard to which 

 those who believe that the conditions of civilisation 

 may be indefinitely improved but can never be funda- 

 mentally altered, are divided from those who believe 

 them to be capable of indefinite metamorphosis. 



This is specially true of the domain of economic 

 production ; for it is mainly on account of its con- 

 nection with the production and distribution of 

 wealth that political government excites so much 

 popular interest and forms the subject of so much 

 vehement controversy. And in every other domain 

 of human activity equally, we shall find that the 

 interests, the endeavours, and the disputes of men 

 have an economic process as their basis, or economic 

 progress as their object. The processes of pro- 

 duction and commerce are, in fact, the central pro- 

 cesses of every nation's life. Government exists 

 to foster them, and changes its form as these pro- 

 cesses develop ; whilst fleets and armies exist mainly 

 for their protection, and more and more depend 

 on the progress that takes place in them. It is, in 

 short, in the domain ofjsconomics that all the social 

 problems of the day either begin or end ; and con- 

 sequently in examining the means by which the 

 great man influences others, the question which it is 



