244 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



of all. So we have been swayed, and have struggled, 

 and have progressed. We have struggled in war. 

 We have struggled by mere contact, when lower races 

 have melted away at the presence of civilised man. 

 We are struggling to some purpose in the scramble for 

 Africa. And, beyond a doubt, we of the white races 

 shall succeed in a further struggle to control the Yellow 

 Terror for the greater good of humanity. Mr. Charles 

 Pearson's formidable table, proving the rapid increase 

 of blacks in the United States, is met by another set 

 of tables, proving that the increase is not so rapid after 

 all. Such effect has Christianity had in making us 

 altruistic that we have voluntarily widened the sphere 

 of rights within each nation. Yet we are not drifting 

 into socialism. Quite otherwise ; what the Zeitgeist 

 really means is to secure genuine equality of oppor- 

 tunity intensified struggle between citizen and citizen 

 accelerated progress ! The yielding of Militarism 

 to Industrialism, and the allied change "from status 

 to contract," are earlier stages in the same great develop- 

 ment by which competition grows ever more and more 

 intense. 



Here then we have Comte's three appeals brought 

 into odd harmony with an apology for supernatural or 

 at least for " ultra-rational " religion. This is to be 

 heartily welcomed as an advance in the right direction ; 

 and the criticisms passed by Mr. Kidd, on the con- 

 temptuous treatment of the origin of religion by Mr. 

 Spencer and his underlings, are well deserved and well 

 established. A saner view of history certainly does 

 commend the opinion, so powerfully advocated by Seeley, 

 that religion is the great animating force in states and 

 societies, the master-builder of historic greatness. Nor 

 can it be denied that there was need of reaction from a 



