Town Geology | Page 7

at least, shall certainly not he angry with them. For when I was young I was very much of what I suspect is their opinion. I used to think one could get perfect freedom, and social reform, and all that I wanted, by altering the arrangements of society and legislation; by constitutions, and Acts of Parliament; by putting society into some sort of freedom-mill, and grinding it all down, and regenerating it so. And that something can be done by improved arrangements, something can be done by Acts of Parliament, I hold still, as every rational man must hold.
But as I grew older, I began to see that if things were to be got right, the freedom-mill would do very little towards grinding them right, however well and amazingly it was made. I began to see that what sort of flour came out at one end of the mill, depended mainly on what sort of grain you had put in at the other; and I began to see that the problem was to get good grain, and then good flour would be turned out, even by a very clumsy old-fashioned sort of mill. And what do I mean by good grain? Good men, honest men, accurate men, righteous men, patient men, self-restraining men, fair men, modest men. Men who are aware of their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount that there is to be learned in such a universe as this. Men who are accustomed to look at both sides of a question; who, instead of making up their minds in haste like bigots and fanatics, wait like wise men, for more facts, and more thought about the facts. In one word, men who had acquired just the habit of mind which the study of Natural Science can give, and must give; for without it there is no use studying Natural Science; and the man who has not got that habit of mind, if he meddles with science, will merely become a quack and a charlatan, only fit to get his bread as a spirit-rapper, or an inventor of infallible pills.
And when I saw that, I said to myself--I will train myself, by Natural Science, to the truly rational, and therefore truly able and useful, habit of mind; and more, I will, for it is my duty as an Englishman, train every Englishman over whom I can get influence in the same scientific habit of mind, that I may, if possible, make him, too, a rational and an able man.
And, therefore, knowing that most of you, my readers--probably all of you, as you ought and must if you are Britons, think much of social and political questions---therefore, I say, I entreat you to cultivate the scientific spirit by which alone you can judge justly of those questions. I ask you to learn how to "conquer nature by obeying her," as the great Lord Bacon said two hundred and fifty years ago. For so only will you in your theories and your movements, draw "bills which nature will honour"--to use Mr. Carlyle's famous parable--because they are according to her unchanging laws, and not have them returned on your hands, as too many theorists' are, with "no effects" written across their backs.
Take my advice for yourselves, dear readers, and for your children after you; for, believe me, I am showing you the way to true and useful, and, therefore, to just and deserved power. I am showing you the way to become members of what I trust will be--what I am certain ought to be--the aristocracy of the future.
I say it deliberately, as a student of society and of history. Power will pass more and more, if all goes healthily and well, into the hands of scientific men; into the hands of those who have made due use of that great heirloom which the philosophers of the seventeenth century left for the use of future generations, and specially of the Teutonic race.
For the rest, events seem but too likely to repeat themselves again and again all over the world, in the same hopeless circle. Aristocracies of mere birth decay and die, and give place to aristocracies of mere wealth; and they again to "aristocracies of genius," which are really aristocracies of the noisiest, of mere scribblers and spouters, such as France is writhing under at this moment. And when these last have blown off their steam, with mighty roar, but without moving the engine a single yard, then they are but too likely to give place to the worst of all aristocracies, the aristocracy of mere "order," which means organised brute force and military despotism. And, after that, what can come, save anarchy, and decay, and social death?
What else?--unless there be left in the nation, in the society, as the