NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 85 



he stands, except in the extreme form which characterizes his 

 theory. 



Nietzsche, like many another critic, drives out a theory at the 

 front door only to let it in at the rear. Self-denial and self- 

 sacrifice, the products of slave-morality, are to be despised, 

 yet every individual, he holds, is to deny himself the gratification 

 of certain impulses that he may attain greater future life and 

 power. Likewise the aristocracy of the present generation are to 

 become dionysians in the interest of the super-man of the future, 

 but Nietzsche provides no sanction for such sacrifice, save an 

 appeal to the law of cosmic evolution. Such a sacrifice has no 

 rational sanction, however, according to his theory, and all super- 

 rational sanctions are tabooed. 



Nietzsche contributed to the development of the doctrine of 

 passive social adaptation by emphasizing the relativity of ethical 

 ideals, but this had been done previously by Comte and Spencer. 

 He went to the extreme, however, in his devaluation of all values. 



The brief outline and few quotations given above indicate how 

 great emphasis our author placed on the power of individual 

 initiative, thus paving the way for a reaction against the laissez 

 faire tendency growing out of the first application of scientific 

 methods to social phenomena. In this way he has contributed 

 very greatly to the development of the doctrine of active adapta- 

 tion in all its phases. 



The philosophy of Nietzsche applied to the group fitted in 

 admirably with the statecraft of Bismarck and together they have 

 inspired the German people to become a dionysian group; but 

 applied to the state this social theory loses its distinctive Nietzs- 

 chean quality and takes on the character of the social theories of 

 Kidd, Pearson, and Carver in which some of the very qualities so 

 bitterly denounced by our author come to have supreme impor- 

 tance. 



BENJAMIN KIDD (1858- ) 

 Religion and Social Progress 



Nietzsche took as his point of departure Schopennauer's will to 

 live interpreted in terms of Darwin's formula of struggle for 

 existence between individuals. Kidd takes as his, a belief in 



