122 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



for existence " against subtler theories. The whole 

 method of building up mind from simple elements 

 is an illusion, whether practised by intuitionalists 

 or by naturalistic schools of moralists. There is no 

 primitive atom in mind. Every element implies 

 every other. If it is true in biology that the whole 

 is prior to the parts, how much more in psychology ? 

 Moral judgments are not proved to be artificial, or 

 secondary, or subordinate, if it is shown that they 

 can be interpreted in terms of man's social nature. 

 Man is moral because he is social: yes, very true; 

 but we are no less entitled to read the proposition 

 from the other end, and to affirm that man is social 

 because he is moral. He is both social and moral 

 in a higher sense than the brute races. We must 

 not assume that the earliest stages in development 

 show us the nature of an organism better than the 

 later stages. A frog is not an effete tadpole ; on the 

 contrary, a tadpole is an immature frog. And so 

 man's moral nature is not a corollary or appendage 

 of brute sociability ; on the contrary again, animal 

 sociability is a dim and imperfect prophecy of human 

 morality and human society. 



Of course, if Darwin's doctrine of reason were un- 

 impeachable, it would be idle to challenge his moral 

 philosophy while admitting his view of the descent 

 of man. But we find his philosophical basis very 

 insecure. Darwin assumes that instinct is given as 

 a fixed datum ; rational consciousness, when it super- 

 venes, works out plans and methods, but does nothing 

 to revise or remodel the inherited aim. Instinct plus 

 reason form a mechanical sum in addition. Reason 

 is a calculating faculty pure and simple. Instinct 



