1 We venture to add a passage from Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics," which we have met with for the first time since this work was published, in illustration of this assertion. Mr. Spencer affirms "the evanescence of evil" and the perfectibility of man, upon the ground that: "All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions." After an elaborate demonstration of this, he resumes as follows: "If there be any conclusiveness in the foregoing arguments, such a faith is well founded. As commonly supported by evidence drawn from history, it cannot be considered indisputable. The inference that as adyancement has been hitherto the rule, it will be the rule henceforth, may be called a plausible speculation. But when it is shown that this adyancement is due to the working of a universal law; and that in virtue of that law it must continue until the state we call perfection is reached, then the advent of such a state is removed out of the region of probability into that of certainty. If any one demurs to this let him point out the error. Here are the several steps of the argument. All imperfection is unfitness to the conditions of existence. This unfitness must consist either in having a faculty or faculties in excess; or in having a faculty or faculties deficient; or in both. A faculty in excess is one which the conditions of existence do not afford full exercise to; and a faculty that is deficient is one from which the conditions of existence demand more than it can perform. But it is an essential principle of life that a faculty to which circumstances do not allow full exercise diminishes; and that a faculty on which circumstances make excessive demands increases. And so long as this excess and this deficiency continue, there must continue decrease on the one hand, and growth on the other. Finally all excess and all deficiency must disappear, that is, all unfitness must disappear; that is, all imperfection must disappear. Thus the ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain— as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die. For why do we infer that all men will die P Simply because, in an immense number of past experiences, death has uniformly occurred. Similarly then as the experiences of all people in all times—experiences that are embodied in maxims, proverbs, and moral precepts, and that are illustrated in biographies and histories, go to prove that organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable,