...--Truly yours,
HERBERT SPENCER.
* * * * *
HERBERT SPENCER TO A.R. WALLACE
_38 Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, W. July 6, 1881._
Dear Mr. Wallace,--I have already seen the work you name, "Progress and
Poverty," having had a copy, or rather two copies, sent me. I gathered
from what little I glanced at that I should fundamentally disagree with
the writer, and have not read more.
I demur entirely to the supposition, which is implied in the book, that
by any possible social arrangements whatever the distress which humanity
has to suffer in the course of civilisation could have been prevented.
The whole process, with all its horrors and tyrannies, and slaveries,
and wars, and abominations of all kinds, has been an inevitable one
accompanying the survival and spread of the strongest, and the
consolidation of small tribes into large societies; and among other
things the lapse of land into private ownership has been, like the lapse
of individuals into slavery, at one period of the process altogether
indispensable. I do not in the least believe that from the primitive
system of communistic ownership to a high and finished system of State
ownership, such as we may look for in the future, there could be any
transition without passing through such stages as we have seen and which
exist now. Argument aside, however, I should be disinclined to commit
myself to any scheme of immediate action, which, as I have indicated to
you, I believe at present premature.
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