I 3 4 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



than the biological struggle for existence, at least at 

 starting, and in its lower stages ; afterwards its working 

 may become swift and telling. Ideals compete against 

 each other in human minds. They commend them- 

 selves not by any physical superiority, but by their 

 attractiveness or by their truth. 



Secondly, there is a difference mentioned by Mr. 

 Alexander himself. Defeat here, in the struggle of 

 ideals, does not imply the extinction of the persons 

 holding inferior moral conceptions. The ideals perish ; 

 the persons who held them are usually converted to a 

 higher way of thinking. Surely here we have an open 

 admission that the struggle between ideals is not a 

 struggle of the Darwinian order. Progress according 

 to Darwin is dependent on the weeding out of the unfit. 

 Progress according to Mr. Alexander is usually secured 

 by a conversion from error to truth. It is a secondary 

 result that errors disappear. And those who were 

 formerly in the grasp of error do not die, but believe 

 the truth and live. 



Yes, it may be said, the errors die. Is not that 

 enough to justify the analogy ? Let us look then a 

 little more closely at the alleged mechanism of moral 

 progress. Variation constitutes, says Mr. Alexander, 

 a new species or new ideal, before which, after a season 

 of struggle, old species or old ideals perish. Does not 

 this statement ignore the fundamental continuity of life 

 throughout all evolution ? The " new species " is an 

 old species modified. The new ideal is not wholly new ; 

 it is the fuller evolution or unfolding of the old, what 

 Hegel called its truth. 



For of ideals above all things we may declare that 

 they do not struggle blindly against each other, or 

 exclude each other. They are not physically distinct 



