CHAP, xix HYPER-DARWINISM IN SOCIOLOGY 263 



perhaps more so than ever ; but we could reopen the 

 book of Social Statics, and admit (for those who de- 

 sired it, or who felt bound to anticipate it) visions of 

 an ultimate stationary state. 



We pass now to Mr. Kidd's first basis, assumed 

 from Weismann, the doctrine that all progress implies 

 struggle and natural selection. This doctrine yields 

 the first or almost the first abstract formula for social 

 dynamics. Comte and others gave us historical 

 sketches and sequences, not general principles or 

 causes of progress. 1 



What then are the conditions of human progress 

 as formulated by Mr. Kidd ? Primarily they are 

 physiological. Let men fight the battle of life ; they 

 will advance. Easy circumstances, enjoyed in an 

 easy spirit, imply arrest, and perhaps arrest implies 

 retrogression. But the wholesome biological ten- 

 dency to struggle, and struggle on, is interfered with 

 by man's gift of reason. The instincts of race keep 

 the beasts in the path of progress, e.g. by struggling 

 in the interests of their offspring. But many human 

 beings e.g. the school of Mrs. Mona Caird resent 

 these struggles as an impertinence and an absurdity. 

 So far, Mr. Kidd agrees with them. It is irrational 

 to acquiesce ! Reason makes us conscious of self ; 

 selfishness therefore and selfishness alone is rational 

 behaviour. But rational behaviour, in this sense of 

 the word, leads straight to retrogression. Now, 

 natural selection would have its slow remedy for this. 

 If the human race had entered the cul-de-sac of 

 selfishness, natural selection would calmly have 



1 If Comte had formulated these, they might have found their way 

 into his Statics rather than his Dynamics. 



