222 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



recent times the characteristic effect of war is down- 

 right evil, as when the Napoleonic campaigns (it is 

 supposed) lowered the stature of the whole French 

 nation. War is a selecting agency of great influence 

 turned upside down. 



Religious Celibacy has possibly had more conse- 

 quences, good or bad, in its moral and social than in 

 its physiological bearings, and it is a historical rather 

 than a natural force ; still it may be mentioned here 

 for convenience. When you take account of Buddh- 

 ism as well as of Christianity, you perceive that re- 

 ligious celibacy has been a phenomenon on a vast 

 scale, and with a gigantic influence, like war. Like 

 war, too, it has selected steadily in the wrong direc- 

 tion. The best and finest spirits were withdrawn 

 from family life ; the inferior types were left to per- 

 petuate their qualities in offspring. 



We see then that famine may possibly show the 

 working of Natural Selection A within narrow limits ; 

 pestilence and disease, if they do anything positive, 

 must be ranked in Natural Selection C, as mere ac- 

 cessories to some better force ; the fatal or sterilising 

 consequences of vice and crime do no more than pro- 

 tect the rear Natural Selection B ; war and religious 

 celibacy select, but select pretty steadily on the wrong 

 side. 



It does not appear therefore that natural selection 

 achieves much for progress, or much even for ad- 

 vance of any kind, in any one definite direction, 

 within human affairs, when viewed biologically. The 

 view of natural selection implied in the doctrine of 

 the " arrest " of the human " body " is upon the whole 

 confirmed. 



