Social Evolution 341 



lies, humanity could not go forward. His words, 

 I repeat, are sufficiently involved to make it pos- 

 sible that he means this, but, if so, his book can 

 hardly be taken as a satisfactory defence of re- 

 ligion. 



If there is justification for any given religion, 

 and justification for the acceptance of supernatural 

 authority as regards this religion, then there can 

 be no justification for the acceptance of all religions, 

 good and bad alike. There can, at the outside, be 

 a justification for but one or two. Mr. Kidd's group- 

 ing of all religions together is offensive to every 

 earnest believer. Moreover, in his anxiety to in- 

 sist only on the irrational side of religion, he natural- 

 ly tends to exalt precisely those forms of superstition 

 which are most repugnant to reasoning beings with 

 moral instincts, and which are most heartily con- 

 demned by believers in the loftiest religions. He 

 apparently condemns Lecky for what Lecky says 

 of that species of unpleasant and noxious anchorite 

 best typified by St. Simeon Stylites and the other 

 pillar hermits. He corrects Lecky for his estimate 

 of this ideal of the fourth century, and says that 

 instead of being condemned it should be praised, as 

 affording striking evidence and example of the vigor 

 of the immature social forces at work. This is 

 not true. The type of anchorite of which Mr. Lecky 

 speaks with such just condemnation flourished most 

 rankly in Christian Africa and Asia Minor, the very 

 countries where Christianity was so speedily over- 

 thrown by Islam. It was not an example of the 



