86 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



supernatural religion and Weismann's formula with emphasis on 

 the survival of the species. The work of the former is largely 

 destructive; that of the latter apologetic and constructive. 



Both writers are hyper-imaginative and dogmatic, presenting 

 mere hypotheses with the certitude of well-established scientific 

 facts, and reading into these hypotheses their own interpretations. 

 Mr. Kidd^s air of authority and use of superlatives tend to make 

 the unsophisticated believe that the ultimate truth in social 

 philosophy has at last been discovered. This characteristic is 

 illustrated by the use, in the first three pages of his Social Evolu- 

 tion, of such terms as " profoundly," " stupendous," " helpless," 

 " onslaught," " most remarkable," " most commanding," 

 "pregnant." His rigid application to social progress of the 

 formula of Weismann is shown by the following: — 



Left to himself, this high born creature [man], whose progress we seem to 

 take for granted, has not the slightest innate tendency to make any progress 

 whatever. It may appear strange, but it is strictly true, that if each of us 

 were allowed by the conditions of life to follow his own inclinations, the 

 average of one generation would have no tendency whatever to rise beyond 

 the average of the preceding one, but distinctly the reverse. This is not a 

 peculiarity of man; it has been a law of Kfe from the beginning, and it con- 

 tinues to be a universal law which we have no power to alter. . . . Progress 

 everywhere from the beginning of life has been effected in the same way, and 

 it is possible in no other way. It is the result of selection and rejection. . . . 

 To formulate this as the inevitable law of progress since the beginning of life 

 has been one of the principal results of the biological science of the century; 

 and recent work, including the remarkable contributions of Professor Weis- 

 mann in Germany, has all tended to establish it on foundations which are not 

 now likely to be shaken.^ 



The above quotation shows not only Mr. Kidd's dogmatic 

 spirit, but the further fact that his social theory is built up 

 deductively on the teachings of Weismann with sole emphasis on 

 natural selection as the method of progress, degeneration result- 

 ing from the cessation of this process and by " pan-mixia " or 

 general breeding. 



Our author shows how wide-spread has been this struggle for 

 existence in social evolution and how it exists today not only 

 between individuals, but between classes, nations and races. He 



' Social Evolution^ p. 36. 



