KIDD ON "SOCIAL EVOLUTION." 45 



Science finds, we are told, mankind holding "beliefs which she 

 asserts have no foundation in reason ; and Science has not done 

 the right thing in the premises. What on earth, then, should 

 Science have done ? Should Science have refrained from criticis- 

 ing the errors in regard to plain matters of fact which she found 

 incorporated with popular religious creeds ? So far as we can 

 judge, Mr. Kidd himself seems to have benefited from such criti- 

 cisms. In regard to the doctrine of evolution, he is a stalwart of 

 the stalwarts. His faith, anticipating proof, has even taken hold 

 of the extreme theory of Weismann and pressed it into the serv- 

 ice of his sociological speculations. But the doctrine of evolution 

 is precisely the one to which the religious world found it most 

 difficult to reconcile itself, and one which, indeed, it is impossible 

 to hold without at least a tacit criticism of views formerly consid- 

 ered as essential to religious faith. Did Mr. Kidd win his present 

 position for himself without antagonizing the religious instincts 

 and convictions of the mass of his fellow-men ? If he did, it must 

 have been because other men prepared the way for him ; for cer- 

 tainly, not without much tribulation, has Science established its 

 claim to judge freely and according to evidence of things within 

 its ken. The world, we are informed, no longer takes the interest 

 it once would have done in such attacks as Prof. Huxley has 

 lately been making on certain orthodox beliefs. Well, if so, we 

 must regard it as a good sign ; for it can only mean that the 

 world that is to say, the thinking world looks upon Prof. Hux- 

 ley's labors as a little superfluous. Still, it is well to remember 

 that even to-day the energetic professor's attack on the miracle 

 of the Gadarene swine has been warmly repelled by eminent 

 ecclesiastical authorities. 



It would really be interesting to know Mr. Kidd's precise 

 views as to the etiquette to be observed by " science " in its rela- 

 tions with religious systems which take under their patronage 

 and vouch for gross scientific or historical errors. If science does 

 not criticise such things, who or what is going to do it ? If no 

 one does it, what chance is there that religion will ever shake 

 itself free from such accretions ? Will the several priesthoods of 

 the world see to it that the faiths they represent are progressively 

 purified from error ? In the last two centuries of the Roman Re- 

 public and the first two of the Empire, the question how to treat 

 foreign cults, which were seeking a foothold in Rome itself, was a 

 serious one for the state. Mr. Kidd was not present to caution 

 the Roman Senate against rash action, or to point out that the 

 great question was not whether these cults did or did not involve 

 material errors, but what bearing religious systems in general 

 had on the development of society ; consequently the Senate had 

 simply to follow its own best lights. " These Bacchic rites," says 



