240 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



higher culture a relapse from the not too lofty 

 philosophical sympathies of Comte which gives us 

 the proposed biological tyranny ? It is an excellent 

 thing, that each man should be an enthusiast for his 

 own speciality ; assuredly it is an excellent and healthy 

 thing ; but there are limits ! 



The doctrine of inevitable retrogression when pro- 

 gress ceases which we noted in the previous chapter 

 as Mr. Kidd's second great debt to Weismann has 

 important consequences for sociology. It sweeps away 

 socialistic dreams, as well as Spencer's doctrine of a 

 stationary state. The second will probably find few 

 mourners to shed a tear over it, though it may be 

 difficult to give up the purely economic conception of 

 a stationary state. What will happen when the world is 

 absolutely too full, and population must cease to grow ? 

 That is one of the unrevealed mysteries of Mr. Kidd's 

 credo. Will he tell us the world is not going to last 

 so long ? Will he appeal to a struggle for eminence as 

 doing the work of the old struggle for life ? In the 

 latter case much of his book would need reconsidering. 

 As to socialism, he points out with much force that 

 arguments which show it to be unscientific may yet fail 

 to dislodge it from the minds of men. Sociological 

 science warns the socialists, " You will retrograde, 1 and 



1 There are two points here : (1) you will retrograde, because natural 

 selection will cease ; (2) natural selection will extinguish you, because you 

 have retrograded. The second will only hold true if socialism and 

 stationariness are partial. Like the eight hours' movement, or like 

 bimetallism, socialism (etc.) must seek to come in by international 

 arrangement if it is not to be speedily swamped by competition from 

 hardier races, within which natural selection is still going on. But, if it 

 were an international possibility, the whole world might jog quietly 

 down hill (see p. 315). That is the theory. Facts do not seem as yet 

 fully to bear it out. France is still a great power, though perhaps in a 

 perilous way (Feb. 1899). And at least France is being swamped by the 

 more prolific races. 



