236 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



doctrine of his scheme, that of the absolute continuity 

 and stability of germ plasm. It must be deemed at 

 least possible, according to Weismann's later views, that 

 use-inheritance should take place. The question will 

 demand more imperiously than ever the eliciting of an 

 answer from facts. Accordingly, when Mr. Benjamin 

 Kidd builds his sociology on the absolute non-inheritance 

 of acquired qualities, he is building on a rock perhaps, 

 but on a rock whose discoverer himself has undermined 

 it and stored it with explosives. This is not our only 

 objection to Mr. Kidd's premises, but even in itself it is 

 a grave matter. 



It is possible to postpone as a merely technical point 

 the question, whence come the variations with which 

 natural selection deals ? So long as .such variations do 

 arise, it may be said, there is little need to trouble our- 

 selves with the how or the whence. But Weismann's 

 dealing with the question is less vigorous and rigorous 

 than it was. His fairy tale has suffered. As they now 

 stand, his doctrines are less astonishing, and somewhat 

 less incredible. 



There is still one more point to name ; we may call 

 it the second basis of Mr. Kidd's sociology. It is held 

 that where progress ceases you have in its place not 

 stagnation, but actual retrogression. No progress, but 

 by natural selection ; nothing but retrogression, where 

 panmixia prevails. So far as I am aware, Weismann 

 has never recanted this position, 1 which has tremend- 

 ous sociological consequences in Mr. Kidd's hands. 

 Yet it seems a characteristic bit of the newest science, 

 a piece of purely deductive reasoning from facts, or 



1 In 1895 he made the admission that panmixia could not in itself 

 fully account for retrogression, though it tended that way ; and the 

 obscure doctrine of germinal selection was brought in as a supplement to 

 panmixia. 



