3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



class, supplied by other classes with, the means of living, becomes, 

 by implication, a leisured class. Not called upon to work for 

 subsistence, its members are able to devote time and energy to 

 that intellectual labor and discipline which are required for pro- 

 fessional occupations as distinguished from other occupations. 



Carrying with us these general conceptions of the nature of 

 professional institutions and of their origin, we are now prepared 

 for recognizing the significance of those groups of facts which 

 the historical development of the professions presents to us. 







KIDD ON "SOCIAL EVOLUTION." 



By W. D. LE SUEUR. 



TO want to say something and to have something to say are 

 two very different things. Mr. Benjamin Kidd, when he took 

 in hand to write a book on Social Evolution, wanted very badly 

 to say something; but whether he really had anything to say 

 is a question upon which we can hardly imagine his own mind, 

 now that he has had time to think over it, is fully made up. Yet 

 when the book first appeared many persons thought that it was 

 freighted with some important message. There was something 

 so impressive and oracular in the manner of the writer, such an 

 evident conviction on his own part that, like the poet invoked by 

 Clough, he had to come to reveal to " trembling thinkers on the 

 brink (who) shiver and know not how to think " just what was 

 and is the matter with them, that the reader had to be more than 

 usually forearmed against illusion not to find himself taking Mr. 

 Kidd very seriously indeed, and reading into his pages all the 

 high significance that was meant to be there but was not. The 

 book, we are free to confess, is not an everyday one. It has a cer- 

 tain baffling quality which bespeaks a peculiar order of mind in 

 its author. It is interesting to read : the style is good ; the lan- 

 guage is strong ; the thoughts seem to have some substance ; the 

 author gives one the impression that he is working steadily for- 

 ward to some important, or what ought to be an important, con- 

 clusion ; and yet, when we come to ask ourselves what the main 

 purpose of the book is, and what proposition of any importance it 

 has established, it is uncommonly difficult to pass from interroga- 

 tion to affirmation. It gives one the impression of a system with 

 a shifting center of gravity. The author at once champions sci- 

 ence and disparages it, exalts religion and denies it any footing in 

 common sense ; makes progress depend upon the unchecked action 

 of natural selection, and again declares that its most important 

 factor is the " ultra-rational " sanction which religion supplies for 



