60 PROLEGOMENA 



VIII. 



Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudinous at- 

 tempts to apply the principles of cosmic evolution, or 

 what are supposed to be such, to social and political 

 problems, which have appeared of late years, a con- 

 siderable 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. 14 A despotic government, 

 whether individual or collective, is to be endowed with 

 the preternatural intelligence, and with what, I am 

 afraid, many will consider the preternatural ruthlessness, 

 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 ruthlessness of individual "saviours of so- 

 ciety"; 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 sup- 

 port in history) that a collective despotism, a mob got 

 to believe in its own divine right by demagogic mission- 

 aries, would be capable of more thorough work in this 

 direction than any single tyrant, puffed up with the same 

 illusion, has ever achieved. But intelligence is another 

 affair. The fact that "saviours of society" take to that 

 trade is evidence enough that they have none to spare. 

 And such as they possess is generally sold to the capi- 



14 Not that the conception of such a society is necessarily 

 based upon the idea of evolution. The Platonic state testifies to 

 the contrary. [T. H. H.] 



Sir John Sebright (1767-1846) published in 1809 a valuable 

 letter on The Art of Improving the Breeds of Domestic Animals. 



