276 WHAT IS LIFE? 



with the natural laws, and instead of labouring to our 

 utmost to create misery, and to work to support misery, 

 we must find a method of preventing the development 

 of misery, of disease, and of crime. And then time is 

 left to enjoy life. It would appear this can be only 

 obtained by the higher order of socialism. Not a 

 dragging down to a lower level, but a raising up to a 

 higher mean level. With the new view of regenera- 

 tion of life, how important is the issue to every one 

 of its. 1 



The system of laissez-faire, which may be inter- 

 preted : every one for himself, and the devil take 

 the hindmost, cannot be the dominant order of 

 action as it is at present. The higher order of 

 thought means : live for others as well as for 



1 "If we ask ourselves, therefore, what course it is the interest 

 of the masses holding political power in our advanced societies to 

 pursue from the standpoint of reason, it seems hardly possible to 

 escape the conclusion that they should in self-interest put an imme- 

 diate end to existing social conditions. Man in these societies has 

 placed an impassable barrier between him and the brutes, and even 

 between him and his less developed fellow- creatures. He no longer 

 fears the rivalry or competition of either. The interest of the masses 

 in such societies appears, therefore, clearly to be to draw a ring fence 

 round their borders ; to abolish competition within the community ; 

 to suspend the onerous rivalry of individuals which presses so 

 severely on all; to organise, on socialistic principles, the means of 

 production ; and lastly, and above all, to regulate the population, so 

 as to keep it always proportional to the means of comfortable exist- 

 ence for all. In a word, to put an end to those conditions which 

 the evolutionist perceives to be inevitably and necessarily associated 

 with progress now, and to have been so associated with it, not only 

 from the beginning of human society, but from the beginning of 

 life." (" Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd, 1895, p. 80.) 



