r. Spencer's views differs from his own
most recent version of them. As the passage cited above shows. I have
carefully defined the sense in which I use the terms which I employ,
and, therefore, I am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract
appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when Mr. Spencer
maintains the only proper functions of Government to be those which
are comprehensible under the description of "Negatively regulative
control," I may suggest that the difference between such "Negative
Administration" and "Administrative Nihilism," in the sense defined by
me, is not easily discernible.

Having, as I hope, relieved myself from the suspicion of having
misunderstood or misrepresented Mr. Spencer's views, I might, if I
could forget that I am writing a preface, proceed to the discussion
of the parallel which he elaborates, with much knowledge and power,
between the physiological and the social organisms. But this is not
the place for a controversy involving so many technicalities, and
I content myself with one remark, namely, that the whole course of
modern physiological discovery tends to show, with more and more
clearness, that the vascular system, or apparatus for distributing
commodities in the animal organism, is eminently under the control of
the cerebro-spinal nervous centres--a fact which, unless I am again
mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions.
In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even
goes so far as to tamper a good deal with the currency.

In the same number of the _Fortnightly Review_ as that which contains
Mr. Spencer's essay, Miss Helen Taylor assails me--though, I am bound
to admit, more in sorrow than in anger--for what she terms, my
"New Attack on Toleration." It is I, this time, who may complain of
misinterpretation, if the greater part of Miss Taylor's article
(with which I entirely sympathise) is supposed to be applicable to
my "intolerance." Let us have full-toleration, by all means, upon
all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which cannot be
distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when Miss
Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation, except
the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is demonstrably
contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such
demonstration ought only to be believed in by the "curates and
old women" to whom she refers. Recent events have not