CHAP, xix HYPER-DARWINISM IN SOCIOLOGY 249 



mystic features of reason. He wants to be a practitioner 

 in the simpler branch of the art ; well ! the arts are not 

 two but one. His own words will prove disobedient to 

 him. Words are something more than the clothes of 

 thought ; they are its incarnation. We inherit words ; 

 we use them in our service, ennobling them or, more 

 frequently, debasing them; they lived before us, and 

 they will long outlive our very memory. We are the 

 fleeting shadows ; they are the substances. Words are 

 like homing pigeons ; they will carry our messages, if 

 we manage them wisely ; but with an instinct surer than 

 our choice with an instinct not to be overborne by our 

 caprice they will go there, to that one point where 

 each is at rest. If we take up the great task of the 

 impersonal reason of mankind, it is in vain that we 

 express our determination to keep clear of the 

 transcendental or of the logos ! It is in us and we are 

 in it ; in it, or in Him, we live and move and have our 

 being, unless Mr. Balfour carries us off in his alluring 

 company upon one of his favourite excursions to " a 

 standpoint outside of reason." Inmates of a madhouse 

 are as nearly as possible emancipated from the logos ; 

 to all others the logos is " closer than breathing." 



Mr. Kidd's doctrine of religion is largely deter- 

 mined by his doctrine of reason. Keason, though useful 

 (like fire) as a servant, is, like fire, a thing anarchical 

 and destructive. Keligion, the source of order, is, by 

 the very nature of the case, extra-rational. Religion 

 makes it man's interest or man's impulse to do things 

 which are not personally for his profit, and which 

 reason therefore discourages. 



At first blush, one is tempted to connect Mr. Kidd's 

 doctrine of religion with the familiar doctrine of future 



