FOOTNOTES:
[196] Book III, Chapter II.
[197] Book III, Chapter II.
CHAPTER IV[ToC]
SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF SOCIALISM
Herbert Spencer has contributed more than any other modern writer to emphasize the effect of environment upon life, whether vegetable, animal, or human; yet, singularly enough, in applying his scientific conclusions to sociology, he entirely failed to take account of the essential difference which exists between natural environment and human environment; between the effect of evolution upon life prior to the advent of man, and its effect upon life subsequent to the advent of man. He applied to human development the laws of evolution which he found working prior to man, though man has reversed the natural process of development so that evolution, under the environment created by man, is taking and must continue to take a direction entirely opposite to that which it took under the dominion of Nature alone. Into what errors Mr. Spencer was led by his failure to recognize the difference between human and animal evolution may be gathered from the fact that he denounced governmental effort to prevent disease as "sanitary dictation";[198] he denounced also municipal ownership of gas and water, the building by the state of houses for the poor, free libraries, free local museums, free education, and generally all that he includes in the expression "coercive philanthropy."[199]