2$6 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



ing to Weismann's later views, that use-inheritance 

 should take place. The question will demand more 

 imperiously than ever the eliciting of an answer from 

 facts. Accordingly, when Mr. Benjamin Kidd builds 

 his sociology on the absolute non-inheritance of 

 acquired qualities, he is building on a rock perhaps, 

 but on a rock whose discoverer himself has under- 

 mined it and stored it with explosives. This is not 

 our only objection to Mr. Kidd's premises, but even 

 in itself it is a grave matter. 



It is possible to postpone as a merely technical 

 point the question, whence come the variations with 

 which natural selection deals ? So long as such vari- 

 ations do arise, it may be said, there is little need to 

 trouble ourselves with the how or the whence. But 

 Weismann's dealing with the question is less vigorous 

 and rigorous than it was. His fairy tale has suffered. 

 As they now stand his doctrines are less astonishing, 

 and somewhat less incredible. 



There is still one more point to name ; we may call 

 it the second basis of Mr. Kidd's sociology. It is 

 held that where progress ceases you have in its place 

 not stagnation, but actual retrogression. No prog- 

 ress, but by natural selection; nothing but retro- 

 gression, where panmixia prevails. So far as I am 

 aware, Weismann has never recanted this position, 1 

 which has tremendous sociological consequences in 

 Mr. Kidd's hands. Yet it seems a characteristic bit 

 of the newest science, a piece of purely deductive 



1 In 1895 ne ma de the admission that panmixia could not in itself 

 fully account for retrogression, though it tended that way; and the 

 obscure doctrine of germinal selection was brought in as a supplement 

 to panmixia. 



