22 



ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book I 

 Chapter 2 



few, and that 

 religion alone 

 prevented 

 them from 

 doing so. 



This contra- 

 diction is 

 entirely due to 

 the fact that, 

 having first 

 divided the 

 social aggre- 

 gate into two 

 classes, he then 

 obliterates his 

 division, and 

 thinks of them 

 both as 

 " man'.' 



is repeated by him with the utmost precision 

 and emphasis could at any period in his history 

 have "suspended the struggle for existence" and 

 "organised society on a socialistic basis" \ and 

 seeing that the struggle for existence, although 

 essential to progress in the long-run, is injurious 

 to the majority of each generation that takes part 

 in it, man, if his chief guide had been reason or 

 self-interest, would have been suspending this 

 struggle constantly for the sake of his own present 

 advantage, and leaving the future to take care of 

 itself. Now, seeing that he does not, as a fact, pursue 

 this obviously reasonable course, it follows that some 

 power opposed to reason must have withheld him ; 

 and this power, argues Mr. Kidd, can be nothing 

 else than religion. Here, he says, are the two 

 functions of religion in evolution. It induces man 

 to submit to the hardships of the evolutionary 

 struggle, at the same time it redeems him from them 

 by softening the hearts of the minority. 



Now with Mr. Kidd's views about religion we 

 have nothing to do here. We are concerned only 

 with the extraordinary self-contradiction involved 

 in these his principal lines of argument, and also 

 with the cause which has led to it, and made it 

 possible. At one moment he says that the majority 

 in all progressive communities have been forced to 

 submit to conditions of life that are prejudicial to 

 them, by a powerful minority to whom these con- 

 ditions are beneficial, and who, if they chose to 

 do so, would still be able to maintain them. At 



