I/O FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



pology, history, philosophy. In the first Mr. Suther- 

 land gives many results of his own observation, and 

 so far as a non-expert can judge, he seems admir- 

 ably equipped both as observer and as summariser 

 for speaking on questions of biology. The same 

 might be said regarding anthropology. In history 

 Mr. Sutherland does not profess to be an original 

 scholar, but he quotes to good purpose, and general- 

 ises strikingly. Yet why does a student of Robert- 

 son Smith express himself as if he had never heard 

 of Old Testament criticism ? Why should he speak 

 as if the character or conduct of King Solomon 

 threw any possible light upon the Book of Prov- 

 erbs ? No doubt the Old Testament references are 

 of trifling amount ; but when an author is dependent 

 (necessarily) on a great amount of borrowed ma- 

 terial, one cannot but judge of his quotations from 

 regions beyond one's knowledge by what one sees 

 of his procedure in regions where one is able, so far, 

 to control his method and test his judgment. In 

 philosophy, finally, Mr. Sutherland is well read, but 

 is hardly master of his materials. A writer who 

 supposes that Kant's " moral law " meant the statute 

 law or criminal code, puts himself out of court. 

 And, for our part, we must dissent in the gravest 

 possible way from his philosophical principles. 



Mr. Sutherland is chiefly interesting to us from 

 the unflinching way in which he carries out the 

 appeal to natural selection, or, as he very tellingly 

 words it, to the working of " elimination," l in one 



1 Yet it is questionable whether Mr. Sutherland's elimination is the 

 same process throughout as Darwin's, i.e. whether his natural selec- 

 tion in morals, etc., is true natural selection. 



