ase from the examination of which he hopes
to derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government from
the beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning government
is wholly true or false; "each of them insists upon a certain
subordination of individual actions to social requirements.... From the
oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced
political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete
unanimity." He speaks of this subordination as a postulate "which is,
indeed, of self-evident validity," as ranking "next in certainty to the
postulates of exact science." As the result of his search for "a
generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul
of truth in things erroneous," he concludes: "This method is to compare
all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less
discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in
which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the
discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the
remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true
throughout its divergent modifications."

What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method to
government? A postulate which he announces to be of "self-evident
validity," an "unquestionable fact"--that is all! His method is a
statement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is in
determining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objects
of thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as he
points out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, it
cannot assist us in discriminating between true and false "discordant
constituents," for which purpose a simple method would be helpful.
Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most "advanced
political theory" of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr.
Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject under
consideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the most
primitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one point
upon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds,
between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, is
this: "That there is something to be explained." An interesting piece of
information, surely! Yes, but "the Power which the Universe manifests to
us is utterly inscrutable." Over against th