260 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



Professor Ritchie is hard to group. He tells us that 

 Darwinism applies mutatis mutandis to human things. 

 " How else ? " With such a saving clause one might 

 predicate any attribute of any subject. The stuffed 

 horse of Wallenstein at Prague, with " only the head, 

 legs, and part of the body renewed," is the same 

 horse still, no doubt ; mutatis mutandis. So long as 

 Professor Ritchie does not take a general view of the 

 changes which he recognises, we do not know whether 

 he believes in applying Darwinism by analogy to a 

 higher evolutionary region, or in extending Darwinism 

 to cover the whole field. Perhaps he has never faced 

 that distinction. In any case, his opinions are left too 

 vague to be estimated. He makes no attempt to find 

 guidance for conduct in Darwinism ; unless perhaps 

 from its "not sanctioning" struggle or laissez faire ? 



Fourthly, however, we have the assertion of Dar- 

 winism as an all-embracing (organic and super-organic) 

 philosophy. This is found in Mr. A. Sutherland, and 

 we are not a little indebted to him for working it out 

 and showing where it leads. It means the denial of 

 the existence of human reason as a factor in the 

 cosmos, and of history as the embodiment of human 

 reason. This we might treat as reducing the position 

 ad absurdum. Against such extravagances not meta- 

 physicians only protest, but evolutionists, like Darwin, 1 

 Professor Karl Pearson, Professor Lloyd Morgan. They 

 have shown us in their capacity as men of science how 

 intelligence, as it arises in the animal world, limits, 



1 Darwin's denial of natural selection among the civilised is found in 

 Descent of Man, pp. 143, 618, quoted in Mr. K. Pearson's Chances of 

 Death, etc. i. pp. 127, 128. This may be set against the anti-ethical 

 suggestions of Darwin regarding bee-murder. While he was tempted to 

 interpret the higher by the lower in evolution, he was not pledged to 

 that error. 



