descendants so demonstrably resemble their remote ancestors and have so slowly adopted their actual variations from these, as is the case with coins.

It may be allowed then that in Production Darwinism has an indisputable place. There is on the whole continuous change by means of the selection (through competition) of variations, however much this process may be arrested or delayed by special causes in special cases. The same may be said of Distribution.

In regard to the third (Society and State) the question is less easily answered. The early development of societies before the existence of the State, in the sense of a central administrative government, was in all probability Darwinian; and after the formation of States the struggle of States against States was (and to some extent still is) Darwinian. But it is open to any philosopher to attempt to go below the fact of variation to a supposed "inner logic" which would explain the variation itself.1

The question too still remains-is all favourable variation (that gives one State victory over another) economical variation, and is all history a record of the effects of economical causes? If it were so, then, as the tendency of industrial development seems to be towards centralization, the aim of political reformers would seem naturally to be to give conscious political expression to that industrial tendency, and (more than that) to make the whole work of the State economical. The latter is actually the claim of some socialists, and it seems to be logically implied in the proposition that the only potent cause of historical charge is the economical-in other words, all causes but this are superficial.

The position has some resemblance to that of Buckle in regard to morals. All progréss, he said, was intellectual; there were no discoveries in ethics. Among the intellectual discoveries Buckle ranked those of certain economists as of high importance. Material progress

and the intellectual aids to it seemed to him to be civi

lization itself-all else being superficial. But some

1 Such an "inner logic " was attempted by Hegel; development in his sense would explain not only the selection but the variation.

socialists speak as if the intellectual elements were created by the economical, going thus a step beyond Buckle. The very Reformation is ascribed to an economical cause; Peter's pence proved too oppressive.1 The Thirty Years' War owed its length to the existence of a country proletariate in Germany which supplied troops without limit.2 The Crusades were largely due to the "land hunger" of the barons." The Jesuits formed a great commercial company, and their State in Paraguay was simply an organization of the non-producing classes. Marx himself connects the Animal Psychology of Descartes with the growth of the Manufacturing system; "animals are machines" could not have occurred to a medieval writer. Engels by the aid of Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society proves to his own satisfaction that the growth of the family both in prehistoric and historic times is essentually due to economic causes. (Urspr. der Fam., etc., 4th ed. 1892).

It would be very nearly as easy to prove that every historical event (whatever else on the surface) was essentially due to religious and moral causes; this was, roughly speaking, the view of Carlyle. Historical economists in Germany and in England, instead of saying that all history is economical, maintain that all economics is in essence historical, relative, and subordinate. In point of fact, historians have shown the presence, in all events, of economical, religious, artistic, and political elements. The question which of them all is at any given time the most potent efficient cause cannot be settled a priori by any dogma, laying down absolutely that one is always or invariably the most potent cause. The historians try to tell us how the various causes act on each other and with each other. In prehistoric or very early historic times and among savages the economical cause will usually be dominant; the struggle for bare subsistence will be in full force. At some epochs (as in the Crusades or the spread of Mohammedanism)

1 Kautsky, More und seine Utopie (1888), p. 41 seq., 66, etc., cf. 76. 2 Ibid., p. 32 note. 3 Ibid., 56. 4 Ibid., p. 91 note. 5 Das Kapital, I. p. 406. For remarks on this passage and generally on the view now discussed, see Dr. Paul Barth, Geschichts-philosophie Hegel's, etc. (1890).

religious enthusiasm and military strength seem paramount; though they had economical effects, they were not due to economical causes. In recent centuries economical causes seem to become more powerful in relation to the rest. Yet the political ideas of the French Revolutionary writers were more powerful both in America and in Europe than any economical causes of which France at least could in that time show the results. The intellectual and generally speaking the spiritual elements of well-being have come to bulk far more largely in the public mind than ever before. A greater extension of physical comfort is desired for the avowed reason that it gives leisure and opportunities for the acquisition of spiritual good. This is the contention too (to their credit be it spoken) of many of the very socialists who would persuade us that the materialistic view of history is the only true one.

The materialistic view seems to be a reaction against a view of history which saw in it if not a record of battles a record of political events, occurring through the agency of sovereigns and statesmen. In the last hundred years it has been becoming more and more impossible to overlook the influence of the people and their industrial condition; and the distribution of property has become a more burning question than the assertion of political rights. Whether the economical element in national life has been always and alone the ruling element or not, it is an element of the first importance now even in the view of politicians. Apart from the peculiar and ultraRicardian view of Value with which Marx and Engels have identified their form of socialism, the socialistic statement of the position and claims of the working class, and more particularly the proletariate, are worthy of careful attention.

The strength of the employer is that he has property, and the weakness of the isolated workman is that he has none. It is urged that in order to prevent the existence of a dependent class of working people we should make the State the proprietor, if not of all goods, at least of the means and materials of production.

ow it is fair to recognise that this act of centraliza

conceivable without the destruction of all and

every kind of private property. The notion of Hegel that without property personality does not become real has had its influence on the followers of the Young Hegelians. Their desire seems to be that, in order that as many as possible may acquire property, a particular kind of property should be taken from private hands and acquired by the State. Absolute communism is probably not a view held by any of the leaders of the school of socialists now under consideration. From the nature of the material world, possession must be exclusive. Value itself involves individual possession, whether it be value in exchange or value in use. Value involves

limitation and the limitation of possession; and property is simply the legal extension of this possession, inter alia beyond present to future goods, and beyond goods made to the sources and materials and instruments of their making. The revolt is against the degree and extent of the limitation not against the limitation itself. There is no form of society that could realize the entire absence of appropriation, for what one man uses another cannot use at the same time and in the same respect.

On the other hand, it might be argued that all so-called property, owing to human mortality, is simply at the most possession for a life-time. The rights of bequest and inheritance might be conceivably altered without any attempt to abolish private property. Lassalle's criticisms. of Hegel, that he represented transitory historical phases of the law of property as flowing from the philosophical notion of property itself, seem to be justified. What alterations in laws of bequest and inheritance would tend to produce greater equality in wealth and opportunities among the citizens of a State, cannot be decided without regard to the time, place, and people concerned. The same must be said of the centralization of the means of production. If history is to be our only court of appeal, we might appeal to it for record of the fact that human nature has made its most solid progress slowly and tentatively. The only deadly sin would be to rest content with things as they are. Socialists have done good service by drawing attention to the frequent absence of real liberty, and the presence of very great inequality.

The proletariate have not much more liberty in the

B B

choice of their work than the poor suitor in the days when Lord Eldon said "The law is open to all," and was answered (by Horne Tooke) "So is the Freemasons' Tavern." On the other hand, because unskilled labourers are now at the bottom of the scale, it does not seem necessary for the better ordering of the commonwealth that they should be raised to the top. English economists of past generations have no doubt unfairly favoured the predominance of the Middle Classes in the conduct of the affairs of the nation. But we need not pass from one extreme to another. Men who work with their hands for wages are of the same flesh and blood as any other members of society, and are no more free from weak and evil passions than any others. The wiser socialists speak rather of a removal of classes, which would mean of the social distinction of classes, the econonomic distinction of classes being probably irremoveable because being, so far as can be seen, indispensable to efficient work. Under the most extensively centralized government of industry it is hard to believe that in the hands of human beings, as they are now known to us (and to speak of them otherwise is Utopian), industry could create an adequate quantity of products without the old aids of divided labour and separate employments, leading necessarily to different mental and bodily habits, as well as flowing naturally from different capacities of mind and body. The utilising of such "variations seems essential to economical progress, and indeed to progress of any kind in an age when extreme specialisation is demanded for excellence in any branch of science as well as of industry.

A change in the method of distribution is not so difficult to conceive. The abolition of production for sale and a return to production for use have seemed an attractive prospect even to men who have no keen sympathy with the philanthropic side of socialism. The attraction of the "Social Revolution" for such men as Richard Wagner the composer, has lain largely in this feature of it. Wagner thinks that money-making has been the curse of music as of other arts in these latter days; the social revolution would rejuvenate music by making it to be studied for its own sake; there would be