50 INTRODUCTION. 



ment in which he can have no personal interest what- 

 ever ? " l 



Mr. Kidd's answer is the bold one that it is not com- 

 patible. There is no rational sanction whatever for 

 progress. Progress, in fact, can only go on by enlist- 

 ing Man's reason against itself. "All those systems 

 of moral philosophy, which have sought to find in the 

 nature of things a rational sanction for human conduct 

 in society, must sweep round and round in futile 

 circles. They attempt an inherently impossible task. 

 The first great social lesson of those evolutionary doc- 

 trines which have transformed the science of the nine- 

 teenth century is, that there cannot be such a sanc- 

 tion. 2 . . . The extraordinary character of the 

 problem presented by human society begins thus 

 slowly to come into view. We find man making con- 

 tinual progress upwards, progress which it is almost 

 beyond the power of the imagination to grasp. From 

 being a competitor of the brutes he has reached a 

 point of development at which he cannot himself set 

 any limits to the possibilities of further progress, and 

 at which he is evidently marching onwards to a high 

 destiny. lie has made this advance under the stern- 

 est conditions, involving rivalry and competition for 

 all, and the failure and suffering of great numbers. 

 His reason has been, and necessarily continues to be, a 

 leading factor in this development ; yet, granting, as 

 we apparently must grant, the possibility of the re- 

 versal of the conditions from which his progress 

 results, those conditions have not any sanction from 

 his reason. They have had no such sanction at any 

 stage of his history, and they continue to be as much 

 1 Op. cit., p. 64. 2 Op. tit., p. 79. 



