1 82 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART m 



this rather different point of view, we are struck with 

 the anomalousness of the fact that natural selection, 

 if it has really been at work, has not already produced 

 an automatic balance between egoism and altruism, 

 or has not done so in the past if it is going to do so 

 in the future. 



There might indeed be an explanation, if sym- 

 pathy in its wider range outside the family were only 

 (what Mr. Sutherland holds it was primarily) a by- 

 product in evolution. In that case sympathy ought 

 to be a casual and fluctuating factor in human nature. 1 

 But Mr. Sutherland carefully rules out that view. 

 Sympathy has been in the main a condition of suc- 

 cess, and has been selected as such through untold 

 ages. Is not Darwinism, at least apart from statis- 

 tical tables, 2 a dangerously plastic method ? Any- 

 thing and everything may be conceived as a quality 

 tending in some way and to an undefined degree 

 towards predominance. Anything and everything 

 may be ticketed, " First prize, for fitness to survive." 

 The formula of Darwinism 



Is twice too big, 

 And therefore needs must fit. 



Indeed, one observes that, in spite of his Darwinian 

 phraseology, Mr. Sutherland is not thinking of natural 

 selection per se as an evolutionary force, but of natural 



1 Compare Mr. A. J. Balfour's remarks upon the aesthetic sense 

 (Foundations of Belief, Book IV.), based on the assumption of evolu- 

 tion by natural selection. 



2 Demanded by Mr. Karl Pearson in The Chances of Death, etc. 

 Dr. Pearson, one notes, is a Professor of Applied Mathematics. His 

 suggestion deserves consideration. 



