FOOTNOTES:
[21] The Sewanee Review, August, 1894.
XIV
“SOCIAL EVOLUTION”[22]
Mr. Kidd’s Social Evolution is a suggestive, but a very crude book; for the writer is burdened by a certain mixture of dogmatism and superficiality, which makes him content to accept half truths and insist that they are whole truths. Nevertheless, though the book appeals chiefly to minds of the kind which are uncharitably described as “half-baked,” Mr. Kidd does suggest certain lines of thought which are worth following—though rarely to his conclusions.
He deserves credit for appreciating what he calls “the outlook.” He sketches graphically, and with power, the problems which now loom up for settlement before all of us who dwell in Western lands; and he portrays the varying attitudes of interest, alarm, and hope with which the thinkers and workers of the day regard these problems. He points out that the problems which now face us are by no means parallel to those that were solved by our forefathers one, two, or three centuries ago. The great political revolutions seem to be about complete and the time of the great social revolutions has arrived. We are all peering eagerly into the future to try to forecast the action of the great dumb forces set in operation by the stupendous industrial revolution which has taken place during the present century. We do not know what to make of the vast displacements of population, the expansion of the towns, the unrest and discontent of the masses, and the uneasiness of those who are devoted to the present order of things.
Mr. Kidd sees these problems, but he gropes blindly when he tries to forecast their solution. He sees that the progress of mankind in past ages can only have been made under and in accordance with certain biological laws, and that these laws continue to work in human society at the present day. He realizes the all-importance of the laws which govern the reproduction of mankind from generation to generation, precisely as they govern the reproduction of the lower animals, and which, therefore, largely govern his progress. But he makes a cardinal mistake in treating of this kind of progress. He states with the utmost positiveness that, left to himself, man has not the slightest innate tendency to make any onward progress whatever, and that if the conditions of life allowed each man to follow his own inclinations the average of one generation would always tend to sink below the average of the preceding. This is one of the sweeping generalizations of which Mr. Kidd is fond, and which mar so much of his work. He evidently finds great difficulty in stating a general law with the proper reservations and with the proper moderation of phrase; and so he enunciates as truths statements which contain a truth, but which also contain a falsehood. What he here says is undoubtedly true of the world, taken as a whole. It is in all probability entirely false of the highest sections of society. At any rate, there are numerous instances where the law he states does not work; and of course a single instance oversets a sweeping declaration of such a kind.
There can be but little quarrel with what Mr. Kidd says as to the record of the world being a record of ceaseless progress on the one hand, and ceaseless stress and competition on the other; although even here his statement is too broad, and his terms are used carelessly. When he speaks of progress being ceaseless, he evidently means by progress simply change, so that as he uses the word it must be understood to mean progress backward as well as forward. As a matter of fact, in many forms of life and for long ages there is absolutely no progress whatever and no change, the forms remaining practically stationary.
Mr. Kidd further points out that the first necessity for every successful form engaged in this struggle is the capacity for reproduction beyond the limits for which the conditions of life comfortably provide, so that competition and selection must not only always accompany progress, but must prevail in every form of life which is not actually retrograding. As already said, he accepts without reservation the proposition that if all the individuals of every generation in any species were allowed to propagate their kind equally, the average of each generation would tend to fall below the preceding.
From this position he draws as a corollary, that the wider the limits of selection, the keener the rivalry and the more rigid the selection, just so much greater will be the progress; while for any progress at all there must be some rivalry in selection, so that every progressive form must lead a life of continual strain and stress as it travels its upward path. This again is true in a measure, but is not true as broadly as Mr. Kidd has stated it. The rivalry of natural selection is but one of the features in progress. Other things being equal, the species where this rivalry is keenest will make most progress; but then “other things” never are equal. In actual life those species make most progress which are farthest removed from the point where the limits of selection are very wide, the selection itself very rigid, and the rivalry very keen. Of course the selection is most rigid where the fecundity of the animal is greatest; but it is precisely the forms which have most fecundity that have made least progress. Some time in the remote past the guinea pig and the dog had a common ancestor. The fecundity of the guinea pig is much greater than that of the dog. Of a given number of guinea pigs born, a much smaller proportion are able to survive in the keen rivalry, so that the limits of selection are wider, and the selection itself more rigid; nevertheless the progress made by the progenitors of the dog since eocene days has been much more marked and rapid than the progress made by the progenitors of the guinea pig in the same time.
Moreover, in speaking of the rise that has come through the stress of competition in our modern societies, and of the keenness of this stress in the societies that have gone fastest, Mr. Kidd overlooks certain very curious features in human society. In the first place he speaks as though the stress under which nations make progress was primarily the stress produced by multiplication beyond the limits of subsistence. This, of course, would mean that in progressive societies the number of births and the number of deaths would both be at a maximum, for it is where the births and deaths are largest that the struggle for life is keenest. If, as Mr. Kidd’s hypothesis assumes, progress was most marked where the struggle for life was keenest, the European peoples standing highest in the scale would be the South Italians, the Polish Jews, and the people who live in the congested districts of Ireland. As a matter of fact, however, these are precisely the peoples who have made least progress when compared with the dominant strains among, for instance, the English or Germans. So far is Mr. Kidd’s proposition from being true that, when studied in the light of the facts, it is difficult to refrain from calling it the reverse of the truth. The race existing under conditions which make the competition for bare existence keenest, never progresses as fast as the race which exists under less stringent conditions. There must undoubtedly be a certain amount of competition, a certain amount of stress and strain, but it is equally undoubted that if this competition becomes too severe the race goes down and not up; and it is further true that the race existing under the severest stress as regards this competition often fails to go ahead as fast even in population as does the race where the competition is less severe. No matter how large the number of births may be, a race cannot increase if the number of deaths also grows at an accelerating rate.
To increase greatly a race must be prolific, and there is no curse so great as the curse of barrenness, whether for a nation or an individual. When a people gets to the position even now occupied by the mass of the French and by sections of the New Englanders, where the death rate surpasses the birth rate, then that race is not only fated to extinction but it deserves extinction. When the capacity and desire for fatherhood and motherhood is lost the race goes down, and should go down; and we need to have the plainest kind of plain speaking addressed to those individuals who fear to bring children into the world. But while this is all true, it remains equally true that immoderate increase in no way furthers the development of a race, and does not always help its increase even in numbers. The English-speaking peoples during the past two centuries and a half have increased faster than any others, yet there have been many other peoples whose birth rate during the same period has stood higher.
Yet, again, Mr. Kidd, in speaking of the stress of the conditions of progress in our modern societies fails to see that most of the stress to which he refers does not have anything to do with increased difficulty in obtaining a living, or with the propagation of the race. The great prizes are battled for among the men who wage no war whatever for mere subsistence, while the fight for mere subsistence is keenest among precisely the classes which contribute very little indeed to the progress of the race. The generals and admirals, the poets, philosophers, historians and musicians, the statesmen and judges, the law-makers and law-givers, the men of arts and of letters, the great captains of war and of industry—all these come from the classes where the struggle for the bare means of subsistence is least severe, and where the rate of increase is relatively smaller than in the classes below. In civilized societies the rivalry of natural selection works against progress. Progress is made in spite of it, for progress results not from the crowding out of the lower classes by the upper, but on the contrary from the steady rise of the lower classes to the level of the upper, as the latter tend to vanish, or at most barely hold their own. In progressive societies it is often the least fit who survive; but, on the other hand, they and their children often tend to grow more fit.
The mere statement of these facts is sufficient to show not only how incorrect are many of Mr. Kidd’s premises and conclusions, but also how unwarranted are some of the fears which he expresses for the future. It is plain that the societies and sections of societies where the individual’s happiness is on the whole highest, and where progress is most real and valuable, are precisely these where the grinding competition and the struggle for mere existence is least severe. Undoubtedly in every progressive society there must be a certain sacrifice of individuals, so that there must be a certain proportion of failures in every generation; but the actual facts of life prove beyond shadow of doubt that the extent of this sacrifice has nothing to do with the rapidity or worth of the progress. The nations that make most progress may do so at the expense of ten or fifteen individuals out of a hundred, whereas the nations that make least progress, or even go backwards, may sacrifice almost every man out of the hundred.
This last statement is in itself partly an answer to the position taken by Mr. Kidd, that there is for the individual no “rational sanction” for the conditions of progress. In a progressive community, where the conditions provide for the happiness of four-fifths or nine-tenths of the people, there is undoubtedly a rational sanction for progress both for the community at large and for the great bulk of its members; and if these members are on the whole vigorous and intelligent, the attitude of the smaller fraction who have failed will be a matter of little consequence. In such a community the conflict between the interests of the individual and the organism of which he is a part, upon which Mr. Kidd lays so much emphasis, is at a minimum. The stress is severest, the misery and suffering greatest, among precisely the communities which have made least progress—among the Bushmen, Australian black fellows, and root-digger Indians, for instance.
Moreover, Mr. Kidd does not define what he means by “rational sanction.” Indeed one of his great troubles throughout is his failure to make proper definitions, and the extreme looseness with which he often uses the definitions he does make. Apparently by “rational” he means merely selfish, and proceeds upon the assumption that “reason” must always dictate to every man to do that which will give him the greatest amount of individual gratification at the moment, no matter what the cost may be to others or to the community at large. This is not so. Side by side with the selfish development in life there has been almost from the beginning a certain amount of unselfish development too; and in the evolution of humanity the unselfish side has, on the whole, tended steadily to increase at the expense of the selfish, notably in the progressive communities about whose future development Mr. Kidd is so ill at ease. A more supreme instance of unselfishness than is afforded by motherhood cannot be imagined; and when Mr. Kidd implies, as he does very clearly, that there is no rational sanction for the unselfishnsess of motherhood, for the unselfishness of duty, or loyalty, he merely misuses the word rational. When a creature has reached a certain stage of development it will cause the female more pain to see her offspring starve than to work for it, and she then has a very rational reason for so working. When humanity has reached a certain stage it will cause the individual more pain, a greater sense of degradation and shame and misery, to steal, to murder, or to lie, than to work hard and suffer discomfort. When man has reached this stage he has a very rational sanction for being truthful and honest. It might also parenthetically be stated that when he has reached this stage he has a tendency to relieve the sufferings of others, and he has for this course the excellent rational sanction that it makes him more uncomfortable to see misery unrelieved than it does to deny himself a little in order to relieve it.
However, we can cordially agree with Mr. Kidd’s proposition that many of the social plans advanced by would-be reformers in the interest of oppressed individuals are entirely destructive of all growth and of all progress in society. Certain cults, not only Christian, but also Buddhistic and Brahminic, tend to develop an altruism which is as “supra-natural” as Mr. Kidd seemingly desires religion to be; for it really is without foundation in reason, and therefore to be condemned.
Mr. Kidd repeats again and again that the scientific development of the nineteenth century confronts us with the fact that the interests of the social organism and of the individual are, and must remain, antagonistic, and the latter predominant, and that there can never be found any sanction in individual reason for individual good conduct in societies where the conditions of progress prevail. From what has been said above it is evident that this statement is entirely without basis, and therefore that the whole scheme of mystic and highly irrational philosophy which he founds upon it at once falls to the ground. There is no such necessary antagonism as that which he alleges. On the contrary, in the most truly progressive societies, even now, for the great mass of the individuals composing them the interests of the social organism and of the individual are largely identical instead of antagonistic; and even where this is not true, there is a sanction of individual reason, if we use the word reason properly, for conduct on the part of the individual which is subordinate to the welfare of the general society.
We can measure the truth of his statements by applying them, not to great societies in the abstract, but to small social organisms in the concrete. Take for instance the life of a regiment or the organization of a police department or fire department. The first duty of a regiment is to fight, and fighting means the death and disabling of a large proportion of the men in the regiment. The case against the identity of interests between the individual and the organism, as put by Mr. Kidd, would be far stronger in a regiment than in any ordinary civilized society of the day. Yet as a matter of fact we know that in the great multitude of regiments there is much more subordination of the individual to the organism than is the case in any civilized state taken as a whole. Moreover, this subordination is greatest in precisely those regiments where the average individual is best off, because it is greatest in those regiments where the individual feels that high, stern pride in his own endurance and suffering, and in the great name of the organism of which he forms a part, that in itself yields one of the loftiest of all human pleasures. If Mr. Kidd means anything when he says that there is no rational sanction for progress he must also mean that there is no rational sanction for a soldier not flinching from the enemy when he can do so unobserved, for a sentinel not leaving his post, for an officer not deserting to the enemy. Yet when he says this he utters what is a mere jugglery on words. In the process of evolution men and societies have often reached such a stage that the best type of soldier or citizen feels infinitely more shame and misery from neglect of duty, from cowardice or dishonesty, from selfish abandonment of the interests of the organism of which he is part, than can be offset by the gratification of any of his desires. This, be it also observed, often takes place, entirely independent of any religious considerations. The habit of useful self-sacrifice may be developed by civilization in a great society as well as by military training in a regiment. The habit of useless self-sacrifice may also, unfortunately, be developed; and those who practice it are but one degree less noxious than the individuals who sacrifice good people to bad.
The religious element in our development is that on which Mr. Kidd most strongly dwells, entitling it “the central feature of human history.” A very startling feature of his treatment is that in religious matters he seemingly sets no value on the difference between truth and falsehood, for he groups all religions together. In a would-be teacher of ethics such an attitude warrants severe rebuke; for it is essentially dishonest and immoral. Throughout his book he treats all religious beliefs from the same standpoint, as if they were all substantially similar and substantially of the same value; whereas it is, of course, a mere truism to say that most of them are mutually destructive. Not only has he no idea of differentiating the true from the false, but he seems not to understand that the truth of a particular belief is of any moment. Thus he says, in speaking of the future survival of religious beliefs in general, that the most notable result of the scientific revolution begun by Darwin must be “to establish them on a foundation as broad, deep, and lasting as any the theologians ever dreamed of.” If this sentence means anything it means that all these religious beliefs will be established on the same foundation. It hardly seems necessary to point out that this cannot be the fact. If the God of the Christians be in very truth the one God, and if the belief in Him be established, as Christians believe it will, then the foundation for the religious belief in Mumbo Jumbo can be neither broad, deep, nor lasting. In the same way the beliefs in Mohammed and Buddha are mutually exclusive, and the various forms of ancestor worship and fetichism cannot all be established on a permanent basis, as they would be according to Mr. Kidd’s theory.
Again, when Mr. Kidd rebukes science for its failure to approach religion in a scientific spirit he shows that he fails to grasp the full bearing of the subject which he is considering. This failure comes in part from the very large, not to say loose, way in which he uses the words “science” and “religion.” There are many sciences and many religions, and there are many different kinds of men who profess the one or advocate the other. Where the intolerant professors of a given religious belief endeavor by any form of persecution to prevent scientific men of any kind from seeking to find out and establish the truth, then it is quite idle to blame these scientific men for attacking with heat and acerbity the religious belief which prompts such persecution. The exigencies of a life and death struggle unfit a man for the coldness of a mere scientific inquiry. Even the most enthusiastic naturalist, if attacked by a man-eating shark, would be much more interested in evading or repelling the attack than in determining the precise specific relations of the shark. A less important but amusing feature of his argument is that he speaks as if he himself had made an entirely new discovery when he learned of the important part played in man’s history by his religious beliefs. But Mr. Kidd surely cannot mean this. He must be aware that all the great historians have given their full importance to such religious movements as the birth and growth of Christianity, the Reformation, the growth of Islamism, and the like. Mr. Kidd is quite right in insisting upon the importance of the part played by religious beliefs, but he has fallen into a vast error if he fails to understand that the great majority of the historical and sociological writers have given proper weight to this importance.
Mr. Kidd’s greatest failing is his tendency to use words in false senses. He uses “reason” in the false sense “selfish.” He then, in a spirit of mental tautology, assumes that reason must be necessarily purely selfish and brutal. He assumes that the man who risks his life to save a friend, the woman who watches over a sick child, and the soldier who dies at his post, are unreasonable, and that the more their reason is developed the less likely they will be to act in these ways. The mere statement of the assertion in such a form is sufficient to show its nonsense to any one who will take the pains to think whether the people who ordinarily perform such feats of self-sacrifice and self-denial are people of brutish minds or of fair intelligence.
If none of the ethical qualities are developed at the same time with a man’s reason, then he may become a peculiarly noxious kind of wild beast; but this is not in the least a necessity of the development of his reason. It would be just as wise to say that it was a necessity of the development of his bodily strength. Undoubtedly the man with reason who is selfish and unscrupulous will, because of his added power, behave even worse than the man without reason who is selfish and unscrupulous; but the same is true of the man of vast bodily strength. He has power to do greater harm to himself and to others; but, because of this, to speak of bodily strength or of reason as in itself “profoundly anti-social and anti-evolutionary” is foolishness. Mr. Kidd, as so often, is misled by a confusion of names for which he is himself responsible. The growth of rationalism, unaccompanied by any growth in ethics or morality, works badly. The society in which such a growth takes place will die out, and ought to die out. But this does not imply that other communities quite as intelligent may not also be deeply moral and be able to take firm root in the world.
Mr. Kidd’s definitions of “supra-natural” and “ultra-rational” sanctions, the definitions upon which he insists so strongly and at such length, would apply quite as well to every crazy superstition of the most brutal savage as to the teachings of the New Testament. The trouble with his argument is that, when he insists upon the importance of this ultra-rational sanction, defining it as loosely as he does, he insists upon too much. He apparently denies that men can come to a certain state at which it will be rational for them to do right even to their own hurt. It is perfectly possible to build up a civilization which, by its surroundings and by its inheritances, working through long ages, shall make the bulk of the men and women develop such characteristics of unselfishness, as well as of wisdom, that it will be the rational thing for them as individuals to act in accordance with the highest dictates of honor and courage and morality. If the intellectual development of such a civilized community goes on at an equal pace with the ethical, it will persistently war against the individuals in whom the spirit of selfishness, which apparently Mr. Kidd considers the only rational spirit, shows itself strongly. It will weed out these individuals and forbid them propagating, and therefore will steadily tend to produce a society in which the rational sanction for progress shall be identical in the individual and the State. This ideal has never yet been reached, but long steps have been taken towards reaching it; and in most progressive civilizations it is reached to the extent that the sanction for progress is the same not only for the State but for each one of the bulk of the individuals composing it. When this ceases to be the case progress itself will generally cease and the community ultimately disappear.
Mr. Kidd, having treated of religion in a preliminary way, and with much mystic vagueness, then attempts to describe the functions of religious belief in the evolution of society. He has already given definitions of religion quoted from different authors, and he now proceeds to give his own definition. But first he again insists upon his favorite theory, that there can be no rational basis for individual good conduct in society, using the word rational, according to his usual habit, as a synonym of selfish; and then asserts that there can be no such thing as a rational religion. Apparently all that Mr. Kidd demands on this point is that it shall be what he calls ultra-rational, a word which he prefers to irrational. In other words he casts aside as irrelevant all discussion as to a creed’s truth.
Mr. Kidd then defines religion as being “a form of belief providing an ultra-rational sanction for that large class of conduct in the individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism are antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered subordinate to the latter in the general interest of the evolution which the race is undergoing,” and says that we have here the principle at the base of all religions. Of course this is simply not true. All those religions which busy themselves exclusively with the future life, and which even Mr. Kidd could hardly deny to be religious, do not have this principle at their base at all. They have nothing to do with the general interests of the evolution which the race is undergoing on this earth. They have to do only with the soul of the individual in the future life. They are not concerned with this world, they are concerned with the world to come. All religions, and all forms of religions, in which the principle of asceticism receives any marked development are positively antagonistic to the development of the social organism. They are against its interests. They do not tend in the least to subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the organism “in the general interest of the evolution which the race is undergoing.” A religion like that of the Shakers means the almost immediate extinction of the organism in which it develops. Such a religion distinctly subordinates the interests of the organism to the interests of the individual. The same is equally true of many of the more ascetic developments of Christianity and Islam. There is strong probability that there was a Celtic population in Iceland before the arrival of the Norsemen, but these Celts belonged to the Culdee sect of Christians. They were anchorites, and professed a creed which completely subordinated the development of the race on this earth to the well-being of the individual in the next. In consequence they died out and left no successors. There are creeds, such as most of the present day creeds of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, which do very noble work for the race because they teach its individuals to subordinate their own interests to the interests of mankind; but it is idle to say this of every form of religious belief.
It is equally idle to pretend that this principle, which Mr. Kidd says lies at the base of all religions, does not also lie at the base of many forms of ethical belief which could hardly be called religious. His definition of religion could just as appropriately be used to define some forms of altruism or humanitarianism, while it does not define religion at all, if we use the word religion in the way in which it generally is used. If Mr. Kidd should write a book about horses, and should define a horse as a striped equine animal found wild in South Africa, his definition would apply to certain members of the horse family, but would not apply to that animal which we ordinarily mean when we talk of a horse; and, moreover, it would still be sufficiently loose to include two or three entirely distinct species. This is precisely the trouble with Mr. Kidd’s definition of religion. It does not define religion at all as the word is ordinarily used, and while it does apply to certain religious beliefs, it also applies quite as well to certain non-religious beliefs. We must, therefore, recollect that throughout Mr. Kidd’s argument on behalf of the part that religion plays he does not mean what is generally understood by religion, but the special form or forms which he here defines.
Undoubtedly, in the race for life, that group of beings will tend ultimately to survive in which the general feeling of the members, whether due to humanitarianism, to altruism, or to some form of religious belief proper, is such that the average individual has an unselfish—what Mr. Kidd would call an ultra-rational—tendency to work for the ultimate benefit of the community as a whole. Mr. Kidd’s argument is so loose that it may be construed as meaning that, in the evolution of society, irrational superstitions grow up from time to time, affect large bodies of the human race in their course of development, and then die away; and that this succession of evanescent religious beliefs will continue for a very long time to come, perhaps as long as the human race exists. He may further mean that, except for this belief in a long succession of lies, humanity could not go forward. His words, I repeat, are sufficiently involved to make it possible that he means this, but, if so, his book can hardly be taken as a satisfactory defence of religion.
If there is justification for any given religion, and justification for the acceptance of supernatural authority as regards this religion, then there can be no justification for the acceptance of all religions, good and bad alike. There can, at the outside, be a justification for but one or two. Mr. Kidd’s grouping of all religions together is offensive to every earnest believer. Moreover, in his anxiety to insist only on the irrational side of religion, he naturally tends to exalt precisely those forms of superstition which are most repugnant to reasoning beings with moral instincts, and which are most heartily condemned by believers in the loftiest religions. He apparently condemns Lecky for what Lecky says of that species of unpleasant and noxious anchorite best typified by St. Simeon Stylites and the other pillar hermits. He corrects Lecky for his estimate of this ideal of the fourth century, and says that instead of being condemned it should be praised, as affording striking evidence and example of the vigor of the immature social forces at work. This is not true. The type of anchorite of which Mr. Lecky speaks with such just condemnation flourished most rankly in Christian Africa and Asia Minor, the very countries where Christianity was so speedily overthrown by Islam. It was not an example of the vigor of the immature social forces at work; on the contrary, it was a proof that those social forces were rotten and had lost their vigor. Where an anchorite of the type Lecky describes, and Mr. Kidd impliedly commends, was accepted as the true type of the church, and set the tone for religious thought, the church was corrupt, and was unable to make any effective defence against the scarcely baser form of superstition which received its development in Islamism. As a matter of fact, asceticism of this kind had very little in common with the really vigorous and growing part of European Christianity, even at that time. Such asceticism is far more closely related to the practices of some loathsome Mohammedan dervish than to any creed which has properly developed from the pure and lofty teachings of the Four Gospels. St. Simeon Stylites is more nearly kin to a Hindoo fakir than to Phillips Brooks or Archbishop Ireland.
Mr. Kidd deserves praise for insisting as he does upon the great importance of the development of humanitarian feelings and of the ethical element in humanity during the past few centuries, when compared with the mere material development. He is, of course, entirely right in laying the utmost stress upon the enormous part taken by Christianity in the growth of Western civilization. He would do well to remember, however, that there are other elements than that of merely ceremonial Christianity at work, and that such ceremonial Christianity in other races produces quite different results, as he will see at a glance, if he will recall that Abyssinia and Hayti are Christian countries.
In short, whatever Mr. Kidd says in reference to religion must be understood as being strictly limited by his own improper terminology. If we should accept the words religion and religious belief in their ordinary meaning, and should then accept as true what he states, we should apparently have to conclude that progress depended largely upon the fervor of the religious spirit, without regard to whether the religion itself was false or true. If such were the fact, progress would be most rapid in a country like Morocco, where the religious spirit is very strong indeed, far stronger than in any enlightened Christian country, but where, in reality, the religious development has largely crushed out the ethical and moral development, so that the country has gone steadily backward. A little philosophic study would convince Mr. Kidd that while the ethical and moral development of a nation may, in the case of certain religions, be based on those religions and develop with them and on the lines laid down by them, yet that in other countries where they develop at all they have to develop right in the teeth of the dominant religious beliefs, while in yet others they may develop entirely independent of them. If he doubts this let him examine the condition of the Soudan under the Mahdi, where what he calls the ultra-rational and supra-natural sanctions were accepted without question, and governed the lives of the people to the exclusion alike of reason and morality. He will hardly assert that the Soudan is more progressive than say Scotland or Minnesota, where there is less of the spirit which he calls religious and which old-fashioned folk would call superstitious.
Mr. Kidd’s position in reference to the central feature of his argument is radically false; but he handles some of his other themes very well. He shows clearly in his excellent chapter on modern socialism that a state of retrogression must ensue if all incentives to strife and competition are withdrawn. He does not show quite as clearly as he should that over-competition and too severe stress make the race deteriorate instead of improving; but he does show that there must be some competition, that there must be some strife. He makes it clear also that the true function of the State, as it interferes in social life, should be to make the chances of competition more even, not to abolish them. We wish the best men; and though we pity the man that falls or lags behind in the race, we do not on that account crown him with the victor’s wreath. We insist that the race shall be run on fairer terms than before because we remove all handicaps. We thus tend to make it more than ever a test of the real merits of the victor, and this means that the victor must strive heart and soul for success. Mr. Kidd’s attitude in describing socialism is excellent. He sympathizes with the wrongs which the socialistic reformer seeks to redress, but he insists that these wrongs must not be redressed, as the socialists would have them, at the cost of the welfare of mankind.
Mr. Kidd also sees that the movement for political equality has nearly come to an end, for its purpose has been nearly achieved. To it must now succeed a movement to bring all people into the rivalry of life on equal conditions of social opportunity. This is a very important point, and he deserves the utmost credit for bringing it out. It is the great central feature in the development of our time, and Mr. Kidd has seen it so clearly and presented it so forcibly that we cannot but regret that he should be so befogged in other portions of his argument.
Mr. Kidd has our cordial sympathy when he lays stress on the fact that our evolution cannot be called primarily intellectual. Of course there must be an intellectual evolution, too, and Mr. Kidd perhaps fails in not making this sufficiently plain. A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else; but the prime factor in the preservation of a race is its power to attain a high degree of social efficiency. Love of order, ability to fight well and breed well, capacity to subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the community, these and similar rather humdrum qualities go to make up the sum of social efficiency. The race that has them is sure to overturn the race whose members have brilliant intellects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, who do not breed well or fight well, and who are not capable of disinterested love of the community. In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment’s hesitation.
