TO THE POOK. 261 



by. We might wait long, indeed, for scientific unanimity 

 here ; rather it is for us men to make the new laws for 

 sociology to study, and the new social phenomena for 

 this still infant science to meditate upon ; and to make 

 them, moreover, clear and decided. 



2. Thus argues the socialist of our days, not with- 

 out a certain amount of truth and reason in his denuncia- 

 tion of society, but also not without passion, and with 

 an undue sense of what is possible, or what changes are 

 speedily practicable in human societies. It is scarcely 

 correct to affirm, as some socialists do, that economic 

 science is enlisted on the side of our present industrial 

 and social system. Political economy, as Professor 

 Cairnes * affirms, is, or should be, indifferent, as between 

 rival theories of social constitution, its business being 

 to determine the effect of any accepted system or the 

 probable effect of any proposed new system on the pro- 

 duction and distribution of wealth. And, in fact, there 

 are eminent economists with a decided leaning to 

 socialist views, as the late Herr Duhring, Lange the 

 well-known author of the History of Materialism, and 

 even our own greatest authority on economic questions 

 since Ricardo, the late Mr. Mill. Political economy is 

 neutral in the controversy, or rather, is appealed to by 

 both sides; but the doctrine of evolution and the new 

 science of sociology, as conceived anji expounded by 

 Herbert Spencer, is decidedly opposed to and casts a 

 clamper on the socialist's aims and aspirations. The 

 .-sociologist, therefore, the disciple of Herbert Spencer, we 

 shall call upon to answer the argument of the socialist ; 

 and the answer is to the following effect : 



Men cannot make any great and sudden improve- 

 ment in the condition of their society, as the socialist 



* Definition and Logical Method of Political Economy. 



