260 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



sociology like one of the colonies of France is to 

 be merged outright in the mother empire. Every- 

 thing is to be biological. Human wisdom, for the 

 most part, is to be an incidental deduction from the 

 laws of life, as manifested in four-footed beasts and 

 fowls and creeping things of the earth. Is it really 

 the case that the progress of science since Comte 

 makes this conclusion inevitable ? Or is it rather a 

 retrogression in the higher culture a relapse from 

 the not too lofty philosophical sympathies of Comte 

 which gives us the proposed biological tyranny ? 

 It is an excellent thing, that each man should be an 

 enthusiast for his own speciality ; assuredly it is an 

 excellent and healthy thing ; but there are limits ! 



The doctrine of inevitable retrogression when prog- 

 ress ceases which we noted in the previous chap- 

 ter as Mr. Kidd's second great debt to Weismann 

 has important consequences for sociology. It sweeps 

 away socialistic dreams, as well as Spencer's doctrine 

 of a stationary state. The second will probably find 

 few mourners to shed a tear over it, though it may be 

 difficult to give up the purely economic conception of 

 a stationary state. What will happen when the world 

 is absolutely too full, and population must cease to 

 grow? That is one of the unrevealed mysteries of 

 Mr. Kidd's credo. Will he tell us the world is not 

 going to last so long ? Will he appeal to a struggle 

 for eminence as doing the work of the old struggle 

 for life ? In the latter case much of his book would 

 need reconsidering. As to socialism, he points out 

 with much force that arguments which show it to be 

 unscientific may yet fail to dislodge it from the minds 

 of men. Sociological science warns the socialists, 



