EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 



VIII. 



Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudi- 

 nous attempts to apply the principles of cosmic 

 evolution, or what are supposed to be such, to so- 

 cial and political problems, which have appeared of 

 late years, a considerable proportion appear to me 

 to be based upon the notion that human society is 

 competent to furnish, from its own resources, an 

 administrator of the kind I have imagined. The 

 pigeons, in short, are to be their own Sir John 

 Sebright.* A despotic government, whether indi- 

 vidual or collective, is to be endowed with the 

 preternatural intelligence, and with what, I am 

 afraid, many will consider the preternatural ruth- 

 lessness, required for the purpose of carrying out 

 the principle of improvement by selection, with 

 the somewhat drastic thoroughness upon which 

 the success of the method depends. Experience 

 certainly does not justify us in limiting the ruth- 

 lessness of individual " saviours of society "; and, 

 on the well-known grounds of the aphorism which 

 denies both body and soul to corporations, it seems 

 probable (indeed the belief is not without support 

 in history) that a collective despotism, a mob got 

 to believe in its own divine right by demagogic 

 missionaries, would be capable of more thorough 



* Not that the conception of such a society is neces- 

 sarily based upon the idea of evolution. The Platonic 

 state testifies to the contrary. 



