KIDD ON "SOCIAL EVOLUTION:' 39 



right action ; condemns socialism as unscientific and totally in- 

 compatible with the continued progress of civilization, and again 

 presents as his ideal of the social state, and as the form to which 

 it is surely tending, something which it is difficult to distinguish 

 from socialism ; commiserates mankind for being involved in a 

 perpetual struggle for existence, and yet looks forward joyfully 

 to a condition of struggle which he says will be more " intense " 

 than anything the past has witnessed. It is possible that Mr. 

 Kidd sees some way in his own mind of bringing these apparently 

 contradictory views into harmony; but the general impression 

 left on a careful reader of his book will be that his literary art 

 includes the supreme accomplishment, to speak metaphorically, of 

 riding two horses at the same moment in opposite directions. 



Unfortunately, all readers are not careful, and some are preju- 

 diced. These are days in which the glib litterateur talks about 

 " the bankruptcy of science " ; and Mr. Kidd, though he does not 

 use the phrase, has done not a little to give countenance to the 

 silly idea. Science, he tells us, has made such a distressing bun- 

 gle in its treatment of religion, shown such hopeless incompe- 

 tency, such amazing blindness, in connection with the whole sub- 

 ject ! Alas ! why did not Mr. Kidd appear a little earlier upon the 

 scene, in order to prevent this painful scandal ? He is a man of 

 science at least, he discourses with the air of one and it is too 

 bad that " science " should have incurred all this discredit when 

 help was so near at hand. One might be disposed to ask whether 

 science has not redeemed its character through the discoveries of 

 Mr. Kidd, were it not that the latter is evidently indisposed to let 

 his work go to the credit of science. Achilles has come out of his 

 tent and mingled in the fray ; but he does not want his mighty 

 deeds to swell the glory of the Grecian name ; rather would he 

 flout the Greeks for the sorry figure they cut before he inter- 

 vened. But, if Mr. Kidd's achievements are not to be passed to 

 the credit of science, to what account are they to be credited ? 

 " Alone I did it " is a proud boast, but still we may ask, in what 

 character ? What is science if it is not organized and correlated 

 knowledge ? If Mr. Kidd has really helped to organize and cor- 

 relate our knowledge on the subject of religion he has done a 

 good thing ; but Science must really claim that by so doing he has 

 extended her boundaries and added to her conquests. And so the 

 historian of nineteenth-century thought will say, if, when the 

 complete work of the century comes to be narrated and appraised, 

 " Kidd on Social Evolution " shall have managed to escape Libi- 

 tina. 



Let us, however, examine with a little attention Mr. Kidd's 

 alleged discoveries, and let us see how far, if at all, science has 

 been at fault in the matter. 



