Of the more thoroughgoing of the multitudinous attempts 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
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
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 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 [23] 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 capitalists of physical force on whose resources they
depend. However, I doubt whether even the keenest judge of character,
if he had before him a hundred boys and girls under fourteen, could
pick out, with the least chance of success, those who should be kept,
as certain to be serviceable members of the polity, and those who
should be chloroformed, as equally sure to be stupid, idle, or
vicious. The "points" of a good or of a bad citizen are really far
harder to discern than those of a puppy or a short-horn calf; many do
not show themselves before the practical difficulties of life
stimulate manhood to full exertion. And by that time the mischief is
done. The evil stock, if it be one, has had time to multiply, and
selection is nullified.
* Not that the conception of such a society is necessarily based
upon the idea of evolution. The Platonic state testifies to the
contrary.