THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



experience of chaos, productive of much evil of all sorts, 

 they would return in great measure to the old lines, the 

 worse, if the wiser, for their experience of anarchy, with 

 all its horrors actual and in apprehension. 



Even under the best conceivable socialistic regime, so 

 long as our present human nature remains what it is, 

 our worst social maladies would really remain; crime, 

 immorality, intemperance, insanity, diseased minds and 

 frames would still exist, possibly less concentrated than 

 at present and more diffused, possibly assuming other 

 forms, but inevitably present in equal total amount. 

 They would necessarily still exist, because they are the 

 inevitable products of the old unchanged human heart, 

 from which proceed the evil thoughts that lead to crime 

 and vice, and of the unchanged inherited physical con- 

 stitutions, from which our bodily and mental maladies 

 spring. As for material poverty (to speak nothing of 

 worse kinds, intellectual and moral, which not unlikely 

 would be born in the socialistic Utopia), unless the 

 most stringent restraints were put upon the increase of 

 population, it would soon manifest itself in a universal 

 instead of a partial privation ; while even from the 

 beginning, unless our selfish human nature was wholly 

 changed, so that men would be keenly spurred to live 

 and labour for others, the total result of production 

 would be very much less than at present, with a corre- 

 sponding narrower dividend for each. It is as near as 

 possible to demonstration, with our existing human 

 nature unchanged, and charged with envy, antipathies, 

 selfishness, rivalry, desire to dominate over others ; with 

 many good qualities unsuited for such a state, as with 

 many evil ones the exact opposite of those unwarrant- 

 ably postulated by the socialist ; with the impossibility 

 of giving ability either its proper field or due incentive 



