1 86 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



force of) animal intelligence True reason checks it Does 

 natural selection ever work by itself (A) ? Higher animals 

 with fewer births evolve as quickly as lower ; has a new force 

 arisen ? or was natural selection never the leading force ? 

 [Can we regard intelligence as the new evolving force ? Dr. 

 Mellone assumes its operation everywhere !] 



V. Can natural selection apply to men? Biologically Struggle 

 with beasts is over Famine (A) is rare, and of doubtful ten- 

 dency Pestilence (C) does harm Vice (B) Crime (B) 

 War (selects the wrong way) Religious celibacy (*.) Sum- 

 mary Sociologically Mr. Kidd's insistence on struggle is 

 really biological ; is unproved; is not an insistence on natural 

 selection Ethically Mr. Alexander's competition of "Ideals " 

 is exaggerated And itself implies reason and sympathy Mr. 

 Sutherland's elimination of evil doers ignores positive causes of 

 moral progress Exemplified typically in Jesus Christ 



VI. If natural selection does not operate where reason and conscience 



exist, it yet may originate them in the loose and incorrect sense 

 in which natural selection is said to originate things ! If reason, 

 etc., were, as most suppose, evolved and selected How 

 selected? Have adjacent races died out? 



VII. Other idealist views Professor Ritchie praises natural selection 



more fully, in vague terms and in some passages Mr. Sande- 

 man rejects it, because he believes in the Ideological perfection 

 of every organism But is it possible to get over the impression 

 produced by rudimentary organs? It is enough if the whole of 

 nature \sgood, and its parts relatively Jit Dr. Stirling believes 

 the casual variation which makes an individual can never make a 

 type Is it certain that every individual is born differentiated? 

 Or that any differences are incapable of growing by cumula- 

 tion into a type ? Possible value of the hypothesis of natural 

 selection, even if a fiction 



IT was no part of the plan of this book to undertake 

 a direct criticism of theories of evolution upon their 

 merits, whether from the point of view of biology or 

 of philosophy, of science or of metaphysics. If we 

 now find it necessary to undertake an estimate of the 

 value of Darwinism, we do so not merely because of 

 the outstanding importance of that theory, but because 



