As an individualist, he would tolerate no “government interference” with the rights of individuals who wished to shoot sea-birds which they could not get, but which usually flew out to sea, and died floating, with a broken wing. Why should these lofty minded people be interfered with? Were they not the prototypes of our own Roosevelt, who is always ready to manifest his love of nature by killing everything in sight? What a pity these individualists were not allowed to have the British telegraph system managed by a gang of financial pirates like the owners of the “Western Union” and the “Postal” of this country. State repression of knowledge having proved such a bad thing in the middle ages, state encouragement of learning must of course, needs be equally bad in the nineteenth century. “Government endowment of research,” indeed! Not for the individualist champion. And yet England holds the world’s honors in biology, because of Darwin, whose opportunity came through the government exploration of “The Beagle,” and Huxley, who began his brilliant career with the government expedition of the “Rattlesnake.” As England led the world in the middle of the century so France had held first place during its first quarter, and that because the French government sent out scientific expeditions to the tropics, which, on their return loaded down the shelves of the “Jardin des Plantes” with specimens which made possible those greatest of her thinkers, Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire. When the feeding of school children is thrown as a charge against Socialism, we are proud to plead guilty. It is our glory that the only cities in the world that have no starving children behind school benches are those cities such as Lille, Ivry, Montlucon, etc., with a Socialist majority in the town councils, which removed the disgrace. Such then were the arguments of this flag bearer of Individualism, who has supplied the opponents of Socialism with objections these thirty years. His individualist philosophy is now so thoroughly discredited as to call for no answer were it not for the fact pointed out by Huxley, that erroneous ideas do not die just simply because they have been killed. It is not necessary to wheel into position the heavy artillery of Marx to overthrow this house of cards. Spencer is a sufficient reply to Spencer. Here is the great contradiction. Spencer, the great biologist, says the brain is to the animal what the Government is to a society. (1) The more effectively and completely the brain controls the members composing the animal body, the higher its place in the organic scale. (2) The less effectively and completely the Government controls the members of the body politic the better will be the society. Sociological literature has failed to produce any individualist champion able to reconcile this astonishing contradiction. And so there it stands plainly before the eyes of Mr. Spencer’s readers.