35 A RISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv do most to make him a useful, a contented, and a 



:hapter3 happy man. 



Unfortunately these conclusions, simple and ob- 

 vious as they seem, run directly counter to that 

 entire theory of society which, with more or less con- 

 sciousness, and with more or less precision, is held by 

 the school of writers, reformers, and politicians, who 

 suppose themselves, in some exclusive sense, to have 

 social progress at heart ; and also to that mass of 

 diffused sentiment which, though not expressing 

 itself formally in any theoretical propositions, has 

 that theory as its foundation, and bears to it, as a 

 political force, the same relation that vapour bears to 

 water. These conclusions, therefore, which imply 

 inequality in capacity as the cause of social progress, 

 and inequality in social circumstances as the neces- 

 sary and permanent conditions of it, are, like most of 

 the other conclusions put forward in this work, certain 

 to be met with objections of the most vehement kind, 

 which it will now be necessary for us fairly and 

 carefully to consider. We shall find that, as we do 

 so, the entire arguments of the present work are 

 summed up and brought together before us ; and 

 however incompatible they may be with the false 

 conception of progress, of class relationships, and 

 of the structure of society generally, which are at 

 present mischievously popular, they form the founda- 

 tion of hopes, for all classes, far more solid than 

 those, the fallacy of which they aim at demonstrating. 



