Social Evolution 343 



will see at a glance, if he will recall that Abyssinia 

 and Hayti are Christian countries. 



In short, whatever Mr. Kidd says in reference to 

 religion must be understood as being strictly limited 

 by his own improper terminology. If we should 

 accept the words religion and religious belief in their 

 ordinary meaning, and should then accept as true 

 what he states, we should apparently have to con- 

 clude that progress depended largely upon the fervor 

 of the religious spirit, without regard to whether the 

 religion itself was false or true. If such were the 

 fact, progress would be most rapid in a country like 

 Morocco, where the religious spirit is very strong 

 indeed, far stronger than in any enlightened Chris- 

 tian country, but where, in reality, the religious de- 

 velopment has largely crushed out the ethical and 

 moral development, so that the country has gone 

 steadily backward. A little philosophic study 

 would convince Mr. Kidd that while the ethical and 

 moral development of a nation may, in the case of 

 certain religions, be based on those religions and de- 

 velop with them and on the lines laid down by them, 

 yet that in other countries where they develop at 

 all they have to develop right in the teeth of the 

 dominant religious beliefs, while in yet others they 

 may develop entirely independent 'of them. If he 

 doubts this let him examine the condition of the 

 Soudan under the Mahdi, where what he calls the 

 ultra-rational and supra-natural sanctions were ac- 

 cepted without question, and governed the lives of 

 the people to the exclusion alike of reason and mo- 



