Note (return) — INTRODUCTION

When the struggle against 'Political Economy' was at its height, Darwin's Origin of Species revealed a universe in which the 'few simple principles' seemed a little absurd, and nothing has hitherto taken their place. Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, attempted to turn a single hasty generalisation from the history of biological evolution into a complete social philosophy of his own, and preached a 'beneficent private war'[2] which he conceived as exactly equivalent to that degree of trade competition which prevailed among English provincial shopkeepers about the year 1884. Mr. Spencer failed to secure even the whole-hearted support of the newspapers; but in so far as his system gained currency it helped further to discredit any attempt to connect political science with the study of human nature.