SOCIAL EVOLUTION 275 



together, within limited areas, large populations ex- 

 tremely sensitive to innumerable social stimuli which 

 did not exist at the beginning of the century. The air 

 is full of new battle cries, of the sound of the gathering 

 and marshalling of new forces, and the reorganisation 

 of old ones. Socialism seems to many minds to have 

 been born again, and to be entering on the positive 

 and practical stage. It has ceased to be a theory, it 

 has begun to be a kind of religion." l 



Now the key to the great problem is this. We 

 cannot have a high and healthy socialism with a system 

 which tends to an infinite development of population, 

 and especially an infinite development of degenerated 

 population. 2 We have seen that to the powers of pro- 

 creation there is no limit, and that in the natural order 

 of things Nature stamps out the weakest Nature 

 murders her offspring. So long, therefore, as we elect 

 to encourage the development of weaklings, so long 

 must we encourage human misery. These unhappy 

 creatures must be maintained at the expense of the 

 labour of the healthy. We must look upon human life 

 with new views. We must bring our ideas in harmony 



1 " Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd, 1895, p. 7. 



~ "Increase of population in a limited area means increased 

 difficulty of finding employment ; and the complex relations of inter- 

 national commerce send panics and crises vibrating throughout the 

 world, which throw millions out of work, or reduce them to starvation 

 wages. . . . 



" If we turn to the moral aspects of the question, it is still more 

 clear that evolution does not tend solely to the side of virtue. There 

 is doubtless less ferocious savagery, less rude and unconscious or half- 

 conscious crime, in civilised societies, but there is far more deliberate 

 and diabolical wickedness." (" A Modern Zoroastrian." S. Laing, 

 1895, p. 176.) 



T 2 



