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The "Critiques and Addresses" gathered together in this volume, like the "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," published three years ago, deal chiefly with educational, scientific, and philosophical subjects; and, in fact, indicate the high-water mark of the various tides of occupation by which I have been carried along since the beginning of the year 1870.

In the end of that year, a confidence in my powers of work, which, unfortunately, has not been justified by events, led me to allow myself to be brought forward as a candidate for a seat on the London School Board. Thanks to the energy of my supporters I was elected, and took my share in the work of that body during the critical first year of its existence. Then my health gave way, and I was obliged to resign my place among colleagues whose large practical knowledge of the business of primary education, and whose self-sacrificing zeal in the discharge of the onerous and thankless duties thrown upon them by the Legislature, made it a pleasure to work with them, even though my position was usually that of a member of the minority.

I mention these circumstances in order to account for (I had almost said to apologize for) the existence of the two papers which head the present series, and which are more or less political, both in the lower and in the higher senses of that word.

The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." In discussing it in my address on "Administrative Nihilism," I found myself, to my profound regret, led to diverge very widely (though even more perhaps in seeming than in reality) from the opinions of a man of genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr. Herbert Spencer's reply[1] assures me that the tie to which I refer will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it may be repulsed.

[Footnote 1: "Specialized Administration;" Fortnightly Review, December 1871.]

Mr. Spencer complains that I have first misinterpreted, and then miscalled, the doctrine of which he is so able an expositor. It would grieve me very much if I were really open to this charge. But what are the facts? I define this doctrine as follows:—

"Those who hold these views support them by two lines of argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but protect its subjects from aggression. The State is simply a policeman, and its duty, neither more nor less than to prevent robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to promote good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty of obvious and tangible assaults upon purse or person. And, according to this view, the proper form of government is neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an astynomocracy, or police government. On the other hand, these views are supported à posteriori by an induction from observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private enterprise would have done the same thing."

I was filled with surprised regret when I learned from the conclusion of the article on "Specialized Administration," that this statement is held by Mr. Spencer to be a misinterpretation of his views. Perhaps I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to declare myself, even now, unable to discover where my misinterpretation lies, or in what respect my presentation of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own most recent version of them. As the passage cited above shows I have carefully defined the sense in which I use the terms which I employ, and, therefore, I am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when Mr. Spencer maintains the only proper functions of Government to be those which are comprehensible under the description of "Negatively regulative control," I may suggest that the difference between such "Negative Administration" and "Administrative Nihilism," in the sense defined by me, is not easily discernible.

Having, as I hope, relieved myself from the suspicion of having misunderstood or misrepresented Mr. Spencer's views, I might, if I could forget that I am writing a preface, proceed to the discussion of the parallel which he elaborates, with much knowledge and power, between the physiological and the social organisms. But this is not the place for a controversy involving so many technicalities, and I content myself with one remark, namely, that the whole course of modern physiological discovery tends to show, with more and more clearness, that the vascular system, or apparatus for distributing commodities in the animal organism, is eminently under the control of the cerebro-spinal nervous centres—a fact which, unless I am again mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions. In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even goes so far as to tamper a good deal with the currency.

In the same number of the Fortnightly Review as that which contains Mr. Spencer's essay, Miss Helen Taylor assails me—though, I am bound to admit, more in sorrow than in anger—for what she terms, my "New Attack on Toleration." It is I, this time, who may complain of misinterpretation, if the greater part of Miss Taylor's article (with which I entirely sympathise) is supposed to be applicable to my "intolerance." Let us have full-toleration, by all means, upon all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which cannot be distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when Miss Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation, except the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is demonstrably contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such demonstration ought only to be believed in by the "curates and old women" to whom she refers. Recent events have not weakened the conviction I expressed in a much-abused speech at the London School Board, that Ultramontanism is demonstrably the enemy of society; and must be met with resistance, merely passive if possible, but active if necessary, by "the whole power of the State."

Next in order, it seems proper that I should briefly refer to my friend Mr. Mivart's onslaught upon my criticism of Mr. Darwin's critics, himself among the number, which will be found in this volume. In "Evolution and its Consequences"[1] I am accused of misrepresentation, misquotation, misunderstanding, and numerous other negative and positive literary and scientific sins; and much subtle ingenuity is expended by Mr. Mivart in attempting to extricate himself from the position in which my exposition of the real opinions of Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I shall take the liberty of re-stating the main issue between us; and, for the present, leaving that issue alone to the judgment of the public.

[Footnote 1: Contemporary Review, January 1872.]

In his book on the "Genesis of Species" Mr. Mivart, after discussing the opinions of sundry Catholic writers of authority, among whom he especially includes St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Jesuit Suarez, proceeds to say: "It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theological authorities distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modern science can possibly require."[1] By the "derivative creation" of organic forms, Mr. Mivart understands, "that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions."

[Footnote 1: Bunsen's "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal

History," vol. i.p. 349. 1854.]

On the contrary, I proved by evidence, which Mr. Mivart does not venture to impugn, that Suarez, in his "Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum," expressly rejects St. Augustin's and St. Thomas' views; that he vehemently advocates the literal interpretation of the account of the creation given in the Book of Genesis; and that he treats with utter scorn the notion that the Almighty could have used the language of that Book, unless He meant it to be taken literally.

Mr. Mivart, therefore, either has read Suarez and has totally misrepresented him—a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez ad hoc, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his references to Suarez' "Metaphysica," while they left him in ignorance of the existence of the "Tractatus," are guides with whose services it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes, being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders.

At the time when the essay on "Methods and Results of Ethnology" was written, I had not met with a passage in Professor Max Müller's "Last Results of Turanian Researches"[1] which shows so appositely, that the profoundest study of philology leads to conclusions respecting the relation of Ethnology with Philology, similar to those at which I had arrived in approaching the question from the Anatomist's side, that I cannot refrain from quoting it:

[Footnote 1: LONDON, April 1873.]

"Nor should we, in our phonological studies, either expect or desire more than general hints from physical ethnology. The proper and rational connection between the two sciences is that of mutual advice and suggestion, but nothing more. Much of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles, both in Ethnology and Phonology, are due to the combined study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race and phonological race are not commensurate, except in ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history. With the migration of tribes, their wars, their colonies, their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from their effects, must have been much more violent in the ethnic, than even in the political, period of history, it is impossible to imagine that race and language should continue to run parallel. The physiologist should pursue his own science unconcerned about language."

It is further desirable to remark that the statements in this Essay respecting the forms of Native American crania need rectification. On this point, I refer the reader who is interested in the subject to my paper "On the Form of the Cranium among the Patagonians and the Fuegians" published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology for 1868.

If the problem discussed in my address to the British Association in 1870 has not yet received its solution, it is not because the champions of Abiogenesis have been idle, or wanting in confidence. But every new assertion on their side has been met by a counter assertion; and though the public may have been led to believe that so much noise must indicate rapid progress, one way or the other, an impartial critic will admit, with sorrow, that the question has been "marking time" rather than marching. In mere sound, these two processes are not so very different.