oral as in the material
world accumulated evidence is gradually generating the conviction that
events are not at bottom fortuitous, but that they are wrought out in a
certain inevitable way by unchanging forces."

The optimism of Spencer's view could not be surpassed. "After patient
study," he writes, "this chaos of phenomena into the midst of which
he [man] was born has begun to generalise itself to him"; instead of
confusion he begins to discern "the dim outlines of a gigantic plan. No
accidents, no chance, but everywhere order and completeness One by one
exceptions vanish, and all becomes systematic."

Always towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete
development and a more unmixed good; subordinating in its universality
all petty irregularities and fallings back, as the curvature of the
earth subordinates mountains and valleys. Even in evils the student
learns to recognise only a struggling beneficence. But above all he is
struck with the inherent sufficingness of things.

But the movement towards harmony, the elimination of evil, will not be
effected by idealists imposing their constructions upon the world or
by authoritarian governments. It means gradual adaptation, gradual
psychological change, and its life is individual liberty. It proceeds by
the give and take of opposed opinions. Guizot had said, "Progress, and
at the same time resistance." And Spencer conceives that resistance is
beneficial, so long as it comes from those who honestly think that
the institutions they defend are really the best and the proposed
innovations absolutely wrong.

It will be observed that Spencer's doctrine of perfectibility rests on
an entirely different basis from the doctrine of the eighteenth century.
It is one thing to deduce it from an abstract psychology which
holds that human nature is unresistingly plastic in the hands of the
legislator and the instructor. It is another to argue that human nature
is subject to the general law of change, and that the process by which
it slowly but continuously tends to adapt itself more and more to the
conditions of social life--children inheriting the acquired aptitudes
of their parents--points to an ultimate harmony. Here profitable
legislation and education are auxiliary to the process of unconscious
adaptation, and respond to the psychological changes in the community,
changes which reveal themselves in public opinion.

3.

During the following ten years Spencer