Our social edifice may be constructed with all possible labor and ingenuity, and be strongly cramped together with cunningly devised enactments, but if there be no rectitude in its component parts, if it is not built on upright principles, it will assuredly tumble to pieces. … Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith that is in him, not as something which may be slighted, and made subordinate to calculations of policy; but as the supreme authority to which all his actions should bend. The highest truth conceivable by him he will fearlessly utter; and will endeavour to get embodied in fact his purest idealisms: knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his appointed paxt in the world-knowing that, if he can get done the thing he aims at—well: if not—well also; though not so well.—

Herbert Spencer, 1850.

• Chapter I – Social Statics– The Right to the use of the Earth
• Chapter II—The Incongruous Passage
• Chapter III—Social Statics—The Right Of Property
• Chapter IV—Mr. Spencer’s Confusion As To Rights.
• Chapter V—Mr. Spencer’s Confusion As To Value
• Chapter VI—From Social StaticsTo Political Institutions