EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY. 53 



sanction either for morality or for social progress. 

 But instead of giving up Nature and Reason at this 

 point, he should have given up Darwin. The Struggle 

 for Life is not " the supreme fact up to which biology 

 has slowly advanced." It is the fact to which Darwin 

 advanced ; but if biology had been thoroughly con- 

 sulted it could not have given so maimed an account 

 of itself. With the final conclusion reached by Mr. 

 Kidd we have no quarrel. Eliminate the errors due 

 to an unrevised acceptance of Mr. Darwin's interpret- 

 ation of Nature, and his work remains the most 

 important contribution to Social Evolution which the 

 last decade has seen. But what startles us is his 

 method. To put the future of Social Science on an 

 ultra-rational basis is practically to give it up. Un- 

 less thinking men have some sense of the consistency 

 of a method they cannot work with it, and if there is 

 no guarantee of the stability of the results it would 

 not be worth while. 



But all that Mr. Kidd desires is really to be found 

 in Nature. There is no single element even of his 

 highest sanction which is not provided for in a 

 thorough-going doctrine of Evolution — a doctrine, 

 that is, which includes all the facts and all the factors, 

 and especially which takes into account that evolution 

 of Environment which goes on pari passu with the 

 evolution of the organism and where the highest sanc- 

 tions ultimately lie. With an Environment which 

 widens and enriches until it includes — or consciously 

 includes, for it has never been absent — the Divine ; 

 and with Man so evolving as to become more and 

 more conscious that that Divine is there, and above 

 all that it is in himself, all the materials and all the 



