equality, which is simply the same thing, is the ultimate cause, not indeed of the lowest form of labour, for we shall have that in any case, but of every form of it which rises above the lowest.

In stating this proposition I do not conceive for a moment that it contains anything itself that will commend it to our acceptance. Unlike certain others, it does not need only to be stated for our common sense at once to perceive the truth of it. It is no more in harmony with any apparent fitness of things than the proposition that milk boils at a higher temperature than water, or that bismuth melts at a lower temperature than lead. On the contrary, if it provoke any immediate judgment at all, it is far more likely to be thought false than true; for there are, as a fact, a number of counter-arguments, which at a hasty glance are certain to seem fatal to it. Its truth can be established only by an appeal to external facts, and by comparing it with them, not with our own reflections. Hastily, by fits and starts, without any system, or per

:

ception that there can be a system, such a comparison has often been made already; but no one has ever made it as a special and separate study, or has ever distinguished clearly the order of facts involved in it. This is the reason why, as I have said already, there are endless opinions on the matter, but absolutely no knowledge; why on the side of the Democrats there is nothing but a false science, and on the side of the Conservatives no science at all. By a true method of inquiry all this might be changed; and it is this method which I venture to trust I may now be the means of initiating.

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WE are here at last on the threshold of the missing science; and we need not now look far to distinguish its scope and subject-matter. The general proposition we are invoking its aid to establish asserts a permanent relationship to exist between two things-human character and social inequality. Now this inequality, whatever its first origin (that is a question we shall touch upon by-and-by), in its present development not only acts upon human character, but is itself produced by this very thing it acts upon, just as a fire may be fed by the hands which it keeps from freezing. Our proposition therefore primarily is a proposition about human character; and if we state it (which we do) as a general and a permanent truth, and declare that we can prove it by

strict scientific methods, we must mean that human character can be made the subject of a science. We must mean that, in spite of all its countless varieties, it yet presents to us certain phenomena so uniform, that it will be possible. to state them as laws of human nature, and to reason from them afterwards as fixed and established principles. This in fact is precisely what I do mean. The missing science is a science of human character.

This statement, however, will never explain itself. To convey to the reader a true conception of my meaning, we require a far fuller and far more minute description of it, and that for two reasons. Compared with the sciences that are now recognised as existing, the science I speak of is closely allied to several; and yet at the same time it is wholly distinct from any. It is like a bull's-eye in a target, which has marks of ball all round it; which by one or two balls has been even grazed perhaps; but which never by any chance has been hit full. We have therefore, with regard to it, to prove two oppo

site things, first that it can exist, and secondly that it does not exist first that its possibility that,

is not a dream, secondly that its existence is not yet a reality.

Such being the case, our best way of approaching it will be by reference to those writers who have already come most near to it. These are Buckle and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Let us turn first to the former.

The science Buckle sought to establish he called the Science of History, and it was to have for its aim, as he himself expressed it, the discovery of the principles which govern the character and the destiny of nations.' That such a science is at least conceivably possible, must, he argued, be plain to everyone who assents to the following propositions :—' That when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the result of some antecedents; and that therefore if we are acquainted with the whole of the antecedents and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate