266 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



if free discussion is maintained it will bring us in time 

 to the ultimate victory of truth ; we still believe that. 

 And we have learned too that the refusal to give un- 

 bounded sway to argument is not wholly bad. It is not 

 pure perversity. It is partly due to the working of 

 deep but only half-articulate convictions and instincts. 

 Men cannot answer the glib logician, but they are sure 

 there is something upon their side of the case to which 

 he has failed to do justice. Socially and morally it 

 would be no advance if mankind laid aside their con- 

 servative misgivings, and sought to set up an age of 

 reason, with all the schoolboy enthusiasm of the Jacobins. 

 Convictions which are more slowly reached are more 

 deeply grounded. 



Mr. Kidd lays stress upon the sort of competition 

 noted in political economy, personal competition between 

 man and man. Unquestionably this has been a vast 

 historical influence. It had its limits. Custom, as 

 economists since J. S. Mill have taught, very widely 

 forestalled competition in the history of human trade. 

 But the two factors are not necessarily inconsistent. 

 They may co-operate, as when custom fixes the amount 

 of a fee, while competition settles who shall do most 

 business and carry off" most fees. In that way, or in 

 some fuller way, competition is likely to assert itself 

 irresistibly as the pressure intensifies. Struggle ensures 

 the maximum product. 



But we have not done with custom when we have 

 recognised the increasing power of competition. In 

 other ways social custom has conditioned the working 

 of competition, notably in the class standard of comfort. 

 Men have never competed en masse for the necessaries 

 of life, or for the chance of piling up a fortune by miser- 

 liness. Both personal inclination and social pressure 



