CHAPTER XIX 



HYPER-DARWINISM IN SOCIOLOGY : STRUGGLE MADE 

 ABSOLUTE MR. KIDD 



Resemblance to Comte Intenser emphasis on biology [cf. Mr. Platt-Ball] (1) 

 Panmixia = degeneration is inconsistent with dreams of socialism or of 

 final balance Selfishness, however, may not care for remote consequences 

 [Ought Panmixia further to imply extinction ?] Also, social " statics " 

 are blotted out And evolution becomes almost identical with progress 

 Could not Mr. Kidd save many essential positions without this assumption ? 

 (2) Next, if progress implies struggle And selfish reason makes un- 

 willing to struggle for good of the race, supernatural counterpoise of 

 religion must help, as hitherto Now, Weismann had riddled his own 

 position with qualifications Kidd also appeals to biology by a doctrine of 

 the social organism ; but everything here depends on philosophy, not 

 biology (3) First, the doctrine of reason ; reason is formal, as with A. J. 

 Balfour, Darwin, Drummond For Mr. Kidd also holds that biological law 

 applies without a break to rational man Yet reason disturbs process- of 

 evolution And Bagehot, Stephen, Drummond have noted other changes 

 due to it Can it be wholly evil 1 Balfour and Kidd repudiate Kant or 

 Coleridge's deeper sense of " reason " But they cannot avoid such sense if 

 it lies in the word and in the fact (4) Secondly, doctrine of religion as 

 anti- rational Not =" future judgment"; that is rational! Can we 

 believe the irrational ? Does not Kidd tamper with Christian equali- 

 tarianism ? Biologically ; variation may be purposeful and professive 

 Historically ; reason is progressive ; by rational methods Religion its 

 fulfilment It needs a force to give it motive and constancy. 



THERE is a great deal to recall Comte in Social Evolu- 

 tion. We have a long and interesting appeal to 

 history. We have the doctrine of altruism assumed, 

 without inquiry or justification, as a definition of the 

 moral ideal ; though it is ousted from the place of 

 legitimate authority which Comte gave it by Mr. 

 Kidd's anarchical conception of reason as purely selfish, 

 and has to borrow its credentials from non- rational 



