-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,