4 8 INTR OD UCTION. 



with the phenomena of life, where he encounters life 

 at last under its highest and most complex aspect." * 



Would that the brilliant writer whose words these 

 are, and whose striking work appears while these 

 sheets are almost in the press, had " sent his roots 

 deep enough into biological soil " to discover the true 

 foundation for that future Science of Society which he 

 sees to be so imperative. No modern thinker has seen 

 the problem so clearly as Mr. Kidd, but his solution, 

 profoundly true in itself, is vitiated in the eyes of 

 science and philosophy by a basis wholly unsound. 

 With an emphasis which Darwin himself has not ex- 

 celled, he proclaims the enduring value of the Struggle 

 for Life. He sees its immense significance even in the 

 highest ranges of the social sphere. There it stands 

 with its imperious call to individual assertion, inciting 

 to a rivalry which Nature herself has justified, and 

 encouraging every man by the highest sanctions 

 ceaselessly to seek his own. But he sees nothing else 

 in Nature ; and he encounters therefore the difficulty 

 inevitable from this stand-point. For to obey this voice 

 means ruin to Society, wrong and anarchy against the 

 higher Man. He listens for another voice ; but there 

 is no response. As a social being he cannot, in spite of 

 Nature, act on his first initiative. He must subordi- 

 nate himself to the larger interest, present and future, 

 of those around him. But why, he asks, must he, since 

 Nature says " Mind thyself ?" Till Nature adds the 

 further precept, "Look not every man on his own 

 things, but also on the things of Others," there is no 

 rational sanction for morality. And he finds no sucb 



1 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 28. 



