Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/629

Rh oldest books in the world are among the most valuable, that age does not necessarily detract from the real merit of a book, or of any truth it may advocate, any more than it does from the quality of wine, or of ancient, long-tried, long-approved friendship, that an old truth is even better than a new error, and that one of the highest and most important functions of the philosopher, in every age, is to reconcile the new with the old, to harmonize the latest revelations of science with the venerable traditions and immutable ideas of the race; in short, to keep mankind constant, and bring them back to the old landmarks, the primary and fundamental truths, from which they have a constant tendency to wander off and go astray. Perhaps it might not be amiss, furthermore, to remind him that the present age, more than any other, and especially this department of science, require to be admonished with the warning proverb of Solomon, "Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set."

But with what propriety can a book be called old, or antiquated in character, that deals almost exclusively, and that, too, with almost unqualified approbation and accord, with the views of such recent and highly-advanced thinkers as Guizot and Hallam, Sismondi and Mill, Cousin, Buckle, Comte, and Herbert Spencer?

If the book in question is old, all that Herbert Spencer has written on sociology is likewise old. If there is nothing new in this book, there is nothing new in any of the reasonings, on society, of that Magnus Apollo, we might almost say, that alter ego, of We challenge our critic to produce a single idea of Herbert Spencer's, having any important bearing on the philosophy of society, and any claim to be considered at all new, either in his "Social Statics," or any other of his works, that is not contained in the "Present Status of Social Science," either in direct expression, or in fair, direct, and inevitable logical sequence, from what is directly expressed. Will our critic accept the challenge, with the privilege of only a brief reply accorded to a misrepresented and much-wronged author? We hardly think so.

The truth rather seems to be, that the work in question contains rather too much about Mr. Spencer and his philosophy of society. It contains, substantially, not only all that is true or essentially valuable in the suggestions of that great and eminently valuable thinker, up to the present time, but something that is not so valuable or true. It contains, in short, a rather too caustic, possibly too just, and unanswerable criticism on his extreme and exaggerated applications of the laissez-faire doctrine, and upon his fantastical reasonings about "the evanescence of evil." It takes too just exceptions to his condemnation of any and all provision, by the state, for the relief of the poor, or even for their education.

But the plea of our critic, which is plausible only on its face, is, that it was unfair, unjust, thus to attack Mr. Spencer, when his views