[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.]