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Rh That "honesty is the best policy" has become a proverb because by the use of it men try to persuade themselves that those who win success through disingenuousness stand on dangerous ground. But it must be confessed that the mass of fortunes, by the attainment of which in our day success is largely gauged, have been reached by skilful dishonesty.

I think it cannot be questioned that autocratic power has in the past been gained almost entirely by what the best of us now-a-days would call immoral methods, and that political power is to-day for the most part reached by means which honourable men of the world would not condone in the conduct of their own affairs. Yet to rise to eminence as conquerors, and as political leaders, is surely counted as success.

That licentiousness and other immoralities are no bar to social distinction is as true to-day as it was in the days of old.

Now without question these three attainments above mentioned, wealth, power, and social distinction, are all counted desirable; and yet note that they are all gained almost without exception by the emphasis of purely individualistic traits: self-love, self-protection, self-glorification, dominance over others for the personal gratification gained, theft of others' goods, destruction of one's enemies, and of what belongs to them and gives them power.

What wonder then that these individualistic traits have a fascination: a fascination that does not and cannot attach to those habits which are the outcome of impulses that give no individual importance, but that tend rather to bring about subordination of the welfare of the individual to the welfare of the race of which he is a mere element.

§ 6. In the preceding article I attempted to show that reasoned processes were the latest and highest development of the variant principle in us. The power of this latest development of the variant principle to become effective is much enhanced by the co-ordinate growth of habits of reflexion in connexion with the action of the fundamental instinct to imitate, which is so powerful in us all.

It is apparent that individual variations determined by process of ratiocination, if this process stood alone, would in many cases affect the lives of the reasoners too lightly to make these variations determinants in the struggle for existence, and thus to fix them in the race to which the individuals belong. There is no conflict of opinion and survival of