136 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



facts. He has not really shown us an extension of 

 Darwinian struggle into a higher region, but something 

 radically different something described by him more 

 or less suggestively, but also more or less inaccurately, 

 in Darwinian language. Progress by struggle this 

 morality thrusting down that morality and reigning in 

 its stead is not exhibited in the facts of history to any 

 one who can look ever so little below the surface. Moral 

 progress is much better described from Mr. Stephen's 

 point of view as one great orderly evolution of human 

 thought and life. Mr. Alexander sometimes uses similar 

 language ; but if such language were meant in full 

 earnest it would be necessary to cease speaking of the 

 limitlessness or indefiniteness of moral change. We 

 may be baffled and bewildered by the course of moral 

 evolution. Many a time good but timid men have 

 regarded change and even advance in moral conduct or 

 ideas as pure wanton iconoclasm. But it was not so ; 

 it was inwardly continuous with what went before. 

 And, although philosophy itself must fail if it seeks to 

 forecast the morality of a distant future, yet the future 

 form will grow out of the present, and, when it comes, 

 men will see in it once more how wisely and how surely 

 God fulfils Himself. To abandon that hope is to 

 abandon morality and all that makes us human. 



