KIDD ON "SOCIAL EVOLUTION." 43 



so far as demonstrable scientific errors have been put forward as 

 essential parts of this or that religious system. And it was not 

 science, be it remembered, that insisted that such errors were 

 essential to the integrity of religion; it was religion, as repre- 

 sented by its official expounders, that took up this position. It 

 was not Galileo who said that religion could not exist if the 

 Ptolemaic system of astronomy were overthrown; it was the 

 Church. All Galileo asked was leave to establish a purely scien- 

 tific theory. It was not the founders of modern geology who in- 

 sisted that religion must stand or fall with belief in a six-days 

 creation ; it was their opponents, the uncompromising partisans 

 of a traditional theology. It was not Darwin or Spencer who said 

 that religion could not withstand the shock of the evolution theory 

 t-he latter said expressly that it could and would it was again 

 the party that spoke in the name of religion. If a certain num- 

 ber of scientific men were carried away by the vehement asser- 

 tions of the champions of religion into believing and speaking as 

 if religion itself were about to be involved in the ruin of the 

 erroneous views which had formed part of its popular present- 

 ment, can we wonder at it ? And if to-day the impression is 

 widespread that religion has been shaken and discredited by the 

 advance of science, on whom must the blame chiefly rest ? With- 

 out doubt on those who, not distinguishing between the accidents 

 of religion and its essence, fought a losing battle with science on 

 matters that were wholly within the jurisdiction of the latter. 



Science, Mr. Kidd says, has lost sight of the main question, 

 which is not whether religious beliefs have " any foundation in 

 reason," but whether they "have a function to perform in the 

 evolution of society." This again is incorrect ; science has not 

 lost sight of this question, but on the contrary has of late years 

 devoted a large amount of attention to it. Never was it so clearly 

 recognized as it is to-day that beliefs may have no foundation in 

 reason, and yet have a more or less important " function to per- 

 form in the evolution of society." The proofs of this are so 

 abundant that it seems a waste of time to produce them. But 

 for very specific statements take the following from Vignoli's 

 work on Myth and Science, published in the International Scien- 

 tific Series : " Man rises in the social scale by means of his super- 

 stitious and religious feelings, which act as a stimulus and symbol, 

 so far as he subjects his animal and perverse instincts to the pre- 

 cepts which he imagines to be expressed by these myths " (page 

 106). And again (page 321), " The problem of myth is transformed 

 into the problem of civilization." Turning to a very recent 

 work, Mr. Havelock Ellis's The New Spirit, we find the author 

 asking, " What is the nature of the impulse that underlies, and 

 manifests itself in, that sun worship, Nature worship, fetich wor- 



