LITERARY NOTICES. 



557 



regime things will not always be done 

 rightly, but neither would they always 

 be done rightly under any system of 

 tyranny, socialistic or other, that could 

 be invented. Laissez-faire was probably 

 never carried further in the history of 

 the world than in the early history of 

 the several colonial communities which 

 afterward combined to form these United 

 States ; and the principles of paternalism 

 and protection in government were 

 probably never carried further than in 

 the management during the same period 

 of the French colonies to the north and 

 east of us. And what was the result in 

 either case ? The neglected colonies of 

 England, with their very loose system 

 of local government, grew strong and 

 vigorous and wealthy, while the over- 

 protected colonies of France seemed 

 smitten with industrial and commercial 

 paralysis. In war the latter were for 

 the most part efficient and formidable, 

 because then they acted in complete sub- 

 mission to leaders accustomed to com- 

 mand ; but in peace they languished and 

 withered. The English colonies, the 

 New England ones in particular, might 

 be compared to vigorous youngsters full 

 of animal spirits, and meeting with many 

 a disaster through their recklessness and 

 impatience of control. The French ones, 

 on the other hand, resembled puny and 

 exacting nurslings always crying out for 

 maternal help and succor. Laissez-faire 

 has its drawbacks, but it means, on the 

 whole, wealth, vigor, resource, and ca- 

 pacity for recuperation. It does not 

 mean dynamite ; the latter, as Mr. Au- 

 beron Herbert has well shown, being 

 the natural concomitant of over-govern- 

 ment. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION, By BENJAMIN KIDD. 

 New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 348. 

 Price, $2.50. 



THIS is a work marked to a more than 

 usual extent by independence and originality 

 of thought, and one which will set a great 



many persons thinking on new lines. After 

 a careful perusal of it, however, we are led 

 to doubt whether the author's own conclu- 

 sions are very well matured. He has caught 

 sight, as he believes, of some important prin- 

 ciples hitherto unrecognized, or but imper- 

 fectly recognized, in the field of social phi- 

 losophy, and with the eagerness natural to a 

 discoverer he has communicated them to the 

 world without waiting to determine their ex- 

 act scope and application. The result is 

 more or less of incoherence and not a little 

 of apparent self-contradiction in what never- 

 theless is from first to last an interesting and 

 impressive dissertation upon a most impor- 

 tant subject. 



Mr. Kidd's first chapter deals with The 

 Outlook. He believes the world to be on 

 the eve of great changes. " Social forces," 

 he says, " new, strange, and altogether im- 

 measurable, have been released among us. 

 . . . The old bonds of society have been 

 loosened; old forces are becoming extinct. 

 . . . The air is full of new battle cries, of the 

 sound of the gathering and marshaling of 

 new forces and the reorganization of old 

 ones." What is the meaning of it all? 

 Science herself, Mr. Kidd tells us, " has ob- 

 viously no clear perception of the nature of 

 the social evolution we are undergoing." 

 Well, then, who has? If Mr. Kidd, who 

 claims above all things to be pursuing rigor- 

 ously scientific methods, why should he deny 

 science any share in his work ? It seems to 

 us that if Mr. Kidd, as a scientific man, can 

 forecast tbe future of society, it would be 

 only using words in their usual acceptation 

 to say that " science " has, in a certain meas- 

 ure, solved the problem. Of course, if Mr. 

 Kidd claimed to have a revelation from 

 heaven, that would be a different thing ; he 

 claims, on the contrary, to be an out-and-out 

 evolutionist, a Darwinian of the Darwinians, 

 and a Weismannian to boot. He tells us a 

 little further on that " the definition of the 

 laws which have shaped, and are still shap- 

 ing, the course of progress in human society 

 is the work of Science, no less than it has 

 been her work to discover the laws which 

 have controlled the course of evolution 

 throughout life in all the lower stages." So 

 we have always thought ; and we have felt 

 sure that Science, as soon as she gathered 

 and sifted a sufficiency of facts, would dem- 



