164 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



cumbrous machinery of elimination. And if imitation 

 does work in human history, then, so far as it works, it 

 supersedes natural selection. 



We may make a separate heading for Mr. Suther- 

 land's conception of history in detail. The method of 

 elimination being always steadily and triumphantly at 

 work, we seem to have before us a programme of the 

 boldest evolutionary optimism. All must be for the 

 best in this best of all possible universes. Progress, it 

 would seem, cannot fail or be checked. That, we 

 think, ought to have been Mr. Sutherland's doctrine, 

 given his premises. Yet it turns out that he believes 

 the clock went back precisely one thousand years when 

 the barbarians overran the Roman empire. It took the 

 barbarians precisely that time Christianity and all 

 to reach the social and moral level of ancient Rome (! !) 

 and then progress recommenced. Now, what does 

 this singular view mean? Perhaps for one thing it 

 means that Mr. Sutherland like Mr. Spencer, yet not 

 altogether like him ; unlike Bagehot has no sense of 

 the moral worth of war, under whatever circumstances 

 waged. It means that the masculine ideal, in spite of 

 some isolated references to it, is left out of the reckon- 

 ing, while the feminine ideal of sympathy is given a 

 place of absolute predominance and authority. In a 

 world wholly governed by natural selection, softness 

 surely ought to be ranked as a deadly sin. The Roman 

 empire had grown too soft to fight. It was not therefore 

 advanced, but retrograde, and unfit to survive. The 

 barbarians may have been one thousand years behind, 

 tried by certain tests; but, in the light of the most 

 practical of all tests, they were not behind, but before. 

 Of course Mr. Sutherland's ultimate definition of 



