242 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



rule. It may prevail in solitary islands, literal or 

 metaphorical ; but the great tides and continents 

 of life are peopled by struggling, suffering, pro- 

 gressive creatures. On a broad view, evolution means 

 progress. 



Before leaving this assumption, it may be well to 

 ask how much depends upon it ? Go on, or you will 

 go back ; acquiesce in struggle, if you don't wish to 

 retrograde ; that is a very urgent appeal an over- 

 whelming appeal, one might call it. Yet in many 

 respects the same result might be reached by the 

 narrower and less urgent, yet tolerably effective appeal, 

 acquiesce in struggle if you wish to progress and to 

 avoid stagnation. Few of us would be content with 

 a "stationary state" from the present hour and on- 

 wards. The narrower appeal would hold us. The 

 same practical results would be reached, with a less 

 precarious and less vulnerable array of assumptions. 

 Socialism would still be condemned as arresting the 

 further progress of the species. Evolution and pro- 

 gress might still be regarded as equivalents perhaps 

 more so than ever; but we could reopen the book of 

 Social Statics, and admit (for those who desired it, or 

 who felt bound to anticipate it) visions of an ultimate 

 stationary state. 



We pass now to Mr. Kidd's first basis, assumed 

 from Weismann, the doctrine that all progress implies 

 struggle and natural selection. This doctrine yields the 

 first or almost the first abstract formula for social 

 dynamics. Comte and others gave us historical 

 sketches and sequences, not general principles or 

 causes of progress. 1 



1 If Comte had formulated these, they might have found their way 

 into his Statics rather than his Dynamics. 



