260 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIEXCE. 



who also more or less suffer from them, will sit down 

 patiently under them and wait for natural selection to 

 deliver them, when they see a more direct and speedy 

 way to their abolition. In short, the majority cannot 

 wait for the social millennium prophesied to come, gene- 

 rations hence, by Herbert Spencer; and they have no 

 faith that natural selection, if unnaturally hindered, as 

 now, will ever select the best in the future, but far more 

 likely the miscellaneous elect, as at present the cunning,, 

 the physically strong and unscrupulous, the skilful 

 schemer within the bounds of law, the immoral, the 

 unpitying, the incapable, the worthless, every way rather 

 than the worthy. Such being the case, argues the 

 socialist, are we to wait with folded arms because, gene- 

 rations after we are gone, natural selection, that is, a 

 name for the results of endless chance, or rather, in the 

 case of human societies at present, casts of the dice 

 loaded with fraud and injustice, may perhaps though 

 it is only a perhaps bring all things to rights ? We do- 

 not think so. For us, if we miss the chance which this 

 life offers of getting justice, no second is ever allowed. 

 For this also Science has taught us. And we do not 

 think that either as rational or moral beings we are 

 called upon to wait, but rather to try to hasten the 

 coming of social justice and righteousness, and the 

 removal of social evils. We feel that now is the time 

 to realize whatever is possible. And let Science under- 

 stand that we know that we are the real final social 

 forces. To us it belongs to mould the shape of society 

 a thing not done by chance, or by passive waiting, but 

 by the active co-operation of men's energies and volitions. 

 Nor is there any reason why we should wait till the 

 science of sociology has made up its mind as to what 

 are the necessary laws that we must or should be guided. 



