* SOCIAL EVOLUTION 249 



they merge from that department of life which is the 

 individual's calling. 1 The position is intolerable, 

 and thus with the employer of labour and the profes- 

 sional classes 2 , there is an equal tension and anxiety, as 



1 " The ordinary run of men live among phenomena of which 

 they know nothing and care less. They see bodies fall to the earth, 

 they hear sounds, they kindle fires, they see the heavens roll above 

 them, but of the causes and inner working of the whole they are 

 ignorant, and with their ignorance they are content." 



" * Understand the structure of a soap-bubble ? ' said a cultivated 

 literary man whom I know, ' I wouldn't cross the street to know 

 it.'" 



" And if this is the prevalent attitude now, what must have been 

 the attitude in ancient times, when mankind was emerging from 

 savagery, and when history seems composed of harassments by wars 

 abroad and revolutions at home ? " . . . " The great bulk of mankind 

 must always remain, I suppose, more or less careless of scientific 

 research and scientific result, except in so far as it affects their modes 

 of locomotion, their health and pleasure, or their purse." (" Pioneers 

 of Science," Prof. Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., 1893, pp. 5, 6.) 



3 " Our vital statistics show that the severest stress, the hardest 

 work, and the shortest lives are not so much the lot of the poor as of 

 the business and professional classes. The appetite for success is 

 really never satisfied, and a deeper insight into the conditions of the 

 rivalry reveals that it is necessarily so ; it grows with eating but it 

 remains insatiable." (" Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd, 1895, 

 p. 59.) 



" A marked feature, therefore, of all the most advanced and pro- 

 gressive societies is the high pitch at which the rivalry of life is main- 

 tained within the community, the freedom of the conditions of this 

 rivalry, and the display of energy and the constant stress and strain 

 which accompany it. Look where he will, the evolutionist finds no 

 cessation of the strenuous conditions which have prevailed from the 

 beginning of life ; the tendency, on the contrary, seems to be to render 

 them more severe. Progress continues to be everywhere marked with 

 the same inevitable consequences of failure and exclusion from the 

 highest possibilities of life, for a large proportion of the individuals 

 concerned." (Idem, p. 70.) 



