ABSTRACT
MR. HERBERT SPENCER, not many months ago, entered on a discussion with regard to his own social philosophy, which, if in his opinion it was worth beginning at all, was, considering how closely it touched himself, worth more than the partial and inconclusive attention he has bestowed upon it. If limited to primitive societies, the histories of which are histories of little else than endeavours to destroy or subjugate one another, it approximately expresses the fact, in representing the great leader as all-important; though even here it neglects too much the number and quality of his followers. Nearly all the socialistic and ultra-democratic reasoning of to-day, which claims to possess any scientific authority, rests on the theory that whatever is achieved within any social aggregate is the product of that aggregate.
