1. If money grew on trees, would we all be richer?

  2. If the rich were poorer, would the poor be richer?

  3. Why does liberty bring about prosperity?

  4. Is democracy better than freedom?

  5. Can morality be taught in public schools?

  6. Is there a better guide than the Golden Rule?

  7. What do Adam Smith and Charles Darwin have in common?

AARP, 28–29

ABC World News Tonight, 20

abilities, 61–62, 77–78

Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, 73n43

alcohol prohibitions, 16

allocation of wealth, 45–47

Alm, Richard

Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think, 68n37

American Revolution, 38

Aquinas, Thomas, 103

Aristotle

Politics, 30n12

Attkisson, Sharyl, 20

BY

HERBERT SPENCER

With an Introduction by

ALBERT JAY NOCK

1960

THE CAXTON PRINTERS, LTD.

CALDWELL, IDAHO

First printing of this American Edition, — July, 1940

Second printing — March, 1944

Third printing — March, 1945

Fourth printing — June, 1946

Fifth printing — March, 1954

Sixth printing — July, 1960

COPYRIGHT 1892 BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT 1940 BY

THE CAXTON PRINTERS, LTD.

CALDWELL, IDAHO

Printed and bound in the United States of America by

The CAXTON PRINTERS, Ltd.

Caldwell, Idaho

90744

IN 1851 Herbert Spencer published a treatise called Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified. Among other specifications, this work established and made clear the fundamental principle that society should be organised on the basis of voluntary coöperation, not on the basis of compulsory coöperation, or under the threat of it. In a word, it established the principle of individualism as against Statism—against the principle underlying all the collectivist doctrines which are everywhere dominant at the present time.

_____________

THE NEW TORYISM.

MOST of those who now pass as Liberals, are Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it, I must first point out what the two political parties originally were; and I must then ask the reader to bear with me while I remind him of facts he is familiar with, that I may impress on him the intrinsic natures of Toryism and Liberalism properly so called.

THE kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling which vents itself in “poor fellow!” on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought of “bad fellow,” which might at another time arise.

OF the many ways in which common-sense inferences about social affairs are flatly contradicted by events (as when measures taken to suppress a book cause increased circulation of it, or as when attempts to prevent usurious rates of interest make the terms harder for the borrower, or as when there is greater difficulty in getting things at the places of production than elsewhere) one of the most curious is the way in which the more things improve, the louder become the exclamations about their badness.