This Candide-like account of our past turns on the belief that what is natural must be right and what is right, natural. It is decorated with well-chosen facts and anecdotes which will, no doubt, be pillaged by future authors, and outlines a theory of history from which historians will, no doubt, learn a great deal.īiologists may be more cautious. The book is – like Ridley's earlier works – beautifully written and extensively researched. In spite of the earthquakes, literal and metaphoric, that now and again perturb humankind's placid course, there is inevitability in his view of life, for the laws of nature, inscribed in our bodies and brains, have made us, and our economies, what they are. Ridley examines the scroll of history and finds that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In its Latin form, the term was applied to the unrolling of a scroll. The word "evolution" does not appear in The Origin of Species, but plays a large part here. not at liberty to write about it") agrees.Īnother volume, published on the same day as Self-Help, gives Rational Optimist a theme. As Samuel Smiles put it in his Victorian bestseller: "The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual", and Matt Ridley (once chairman of Northern Rock, albeit "under the terms of my employment there. Its rationale comes from Self-Help, a work published in 1859.
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