94 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



and that works to the surface at many isolated points. 

 Good conduct is more evolved than bad conduct, and, 

 being more evolved, it is more complex. The bad 

 man is like a clumsy juggler who can barely keep in 

 motion two balls at once ; the good man is like a 

 clever juggler who, without sign of effort, can con- 

 trol his half-dozen balls or more. With this is associ- 

 ated the conception of evil and in particular of crime, 

 as atavism. The criminal is a survival or revival of 

 a lower social type ; he cannot bear the stress of 

 civilisation at its present pitch, and so falls back 

 upon "good old rules" and "simple plans. }> A 

 further implication is plain. So far as this mode of 

 conceiving things is true, moral progress runs par- 

 allel with intellectual progress, and rests upon it. 

 The criminal breaks down because he is psychologi- 

 cally incompetent. Goodness is wisdom. Perhaps 

 such a position is a wholesome corrective of dangers 

 that beset ordinary ethical thinking. When we have 

 begun by distinguishing between intellectual and 

 moral advance and by insisting that one may be 

 found in separation from the other, we are too apt 

 to let the distinction harden into an absolute contrast. 

 It is well to have our attention recalled from sim- 

 plicity, as a moral ideal, to the rival claims of wis- 

 dom. For ultimately all ideals must converge ; and 

 no sort of goodness can long commend itself which 

 fails to make room for the higher tasks of culture 

 and the finer growths of intellect. If we ask next 

 what is the authority for this view of things as as- 

 sumed by Spencer ?< If Comte may be regarded as 

 appealing to biology, to history, and to a half-psycho- 

 logical, half-ethical doctrine of altruism, to what does 



