114 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



is no more to be said. The timid man will obey 

 morality as a sort of insurance policy : he will be 

 moral on the chance that immorality may be 

 punished. But often the bold man will play a 

 recklessly speculative game heavy risks, great 

 profits. If he succeeds, how can you prove to him 

 that he chose wrongly? The "idiot" may have 

 been quite right from his own point of view. So 

 much for the " Science of Ethics " ! The Christian, 

 too, admits that our moral nature lays down great 

 postulates, to which experience does not always 

 conform. But we look to the future for the recom- 

 pense of reward not " so much pleasure for so 

 much goodness," but a larger life, and the "wages 

 of going on and not to die." 



It will clear our thoughts if we compare Mr. Ste- 

 phen with his predecessors. 



First, with Comte. In some respects Mr. Stephen 

 seems to be the legitimate heir of Comte, especially 

 in regard to the biological appeal. Stephen's think- 

 ing is guided throughout by the biological analogy, 

 and he is able to throw fuller light upon it by 

 the modern evolutionary conception of infinitesimal 

 changes which maintain a moving equilibrium. Like 

 Comte again, and unlike Spencer, he definitely iden- 

 tifies morality with the claim of society upon the 

 individual in contrast with all individual claims or 

 wishes. But here the likeness to Comte ceases. 

 First of all it is perhaps significant that Mr. Stephen 

 refuses to speak of a social organism, preferring the 

 more indefinite phrase, social tissue. That points us 

 to the individualism which lurks in the background 



