so eloquently reproaches them. Why did the Liberals formerly do their utmost to restrict State power? Because this power was then exercised in the interests of the upper classes and to the detriment of the lower. To mention but one example: When, in former times, it was desired to fix a scale of prices and wages, it was with a view to preventing their being raised, while, to-day, there is a clamor for a lessening of hours of labor with increased remuneration. Why do Liberals now wish to add to the power and authority of the State? To be able to ameliorate the intellectual, moral, and material condition of a greater number of citizens. There is no inconsistency in their programme; the object in view, which is the great aim of all civilization, has been always the same—to assure to each individual liberty and well-being in proportion to his merit and activity! I think that the great fundamental error of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s system, which is so generally accepted at the present day, consists in the belief that if State power were but sufficiently reduced to narrow it to the circle traced by orthodox economists, the Darwinian law and the survival of the fittest would naturally follow without difficulty. Mr. Spencer has simply borrowed from old-fashioned political economy without submitting to the fire of his inexorable criticism, the superficial and false notion that, if the _laissez-faire_ and free contract _régime_ were proclaimed, the so-called natural laws would govern the social order. He forgets that all individual activity is accomplished under the empire of laws, which enact as to ownership, hereditary succession, mutual obligations, trade and industry, political institutions and administrations, besides a multitude of laws referring to material interests, banking organizations, money, credit, colonies, army, navy, railways, &c. For natural laws, and especially the law of the survival of the fittest, to become established, it would be necessary to annihilate the immense existing edifice of legislation, and to return to the wild state of society when primitive men lived, in all probability, much as do animals, with no possessions, no successions, no protection of the weak by the State. Those who, with Mr. Spencer and Haeckel and other Conservative evolutionists, are anxious to see the law of the survival of the fittest and of natural selection adopted in human society, do not realize that the animal kingdom and social organization are two such totally different domains that the same law, applied to each, would produce wholly opposite effects. Mr. Herbert Spencer gives an admirable description of the manner in which natural selection is accomplished among animals:—