274 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CKEED OF SCIENCE. 



Plato in which it is discussed, or as Christianity which 

 began with a communistic form of society, has yet only 

 within the past half-century come to be felt as a con- 

 troversy involving real and living issues of a momentous 

 character, and not Utopias only remotely bordering 

 upon the possible, or vicious theories, which, reduced 

 to practice, would disintegrate and dissolve every exist- 

 ing or conceivable society. 



Though only in abstract, we have tried to present 

 the essential lines of the socialist's argument, and his 

 general indictment against society, together with the 

 reply of the defender of existing society, from the new 

 standpoint of evolution, and from the less comprehensive 

 point of view of economic science. But while acknow- 

 ledging an amount of truth in the arguments of the 

 socialist on the one side, and of the sociologist and 

 economist on the other, we do not find the position of 

 either wholly satisfactory. While we subscribe fully 

 to some of the socialist's indictments of existing society, 

 thinking it almost as bad as could be in some respects, 

 we still demur, with the sociologist, to the socialist's 

 contemplated remedies. We object to those advanced, 

 and still more, perhaps, to those not advanced and 

 scarcely even half-defined to himself, but which are, 

 nevertheless, evidently harboured in the breast of the 

 socialist, and sometimes vaguely shadowed forth. We 

 submit that to prove society imperfect is not the point ; 

 for this is granted on all sides, though to different 

 extents. It would be granted by even the greatest 

 social optimist, the extremest political conservative, that 

 society is not perfect. The real question relates to the 

 practicable cure of admitted evils, and involves a com- 

 parative estimate of the efficacy of different modes of 

 treatment, and also in the opinion of the conservative, 



