EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 55 



this kind ; it can only be lived out. And that precisely 

 is what Nature is making all of us, in greater or less 

 degree, do, and every day making us do more. By 

 the time, indeed, that the world as a whole is suffi- 

 ciently educated to see the problem, it will already 

 have been solved. There is little comfort, then, for 

 apologetics in this direction. Only by bringing theol- 

 ogy into harmony with Nature and into line with the 

 rest of our knowledge can the noble interests given it 

 to conserve retain their vitality in a scientific age. 

 The first essential of a working religion is that it shall 

 be congruous with Man ; the second that it shall be 

 congruous with Nature. Whatever its sanctions, its 

 forces must not be abnormal, but reinforcements and 

 higher potentialities of those forces which, from eter- 

 nity, have shaped the progress of the world. No 

 other dynamic can enter into the working schemes of 

 those who seek to guide the destinies of nations or 

 carry on the Evolution of Society on scientific princi- 

 ples. A divorce here would be the catastrophe of 

 reason, and the end of faith. We believe with Mr. 

 Kidd that " the process of social development which 

 has been taking place, and which is still in progress, 

 in our Western civilization, is not the product of the 

 intellect, but the motive force behind it has had its 

 seat and origin in the fund of altruistic feeling with 

 which our civilization has become equipped." But we 

 shall endeavor to show that this fund of altruistic 

 feeling has been slowly funded in the race by Nature, 

 or through Nature, and as the direct and inevitable 

 result of that Struggle for the Life of Others, which 

 has been from all time a condition of existence. 

 What religion has done to build up this fund, 



