CHAP, xix HYPER-DARWINISM IN SOCIOLOGY 2/1 



a rational and self-interested policy, if this be the 

 truth. This is not therefore Mr. Kidd's meaning ; 

 and the doctrine in itself is unsatisfactory. Selfish- 

 ness produced to infinity remains selfishness still ; it 

 does not turn into righteousness or unselfishness. 

 Other worldliness is only a more morbid growth from 

 the same root as worldliness. If it is moral if it is 

 one's duty to preach the doctrine of future judg- 

 ment, that is only because selfish fears and selfish 

 hopes, once awakened, may be transformed, without 

 a visible break, into something nobler than them- 

 selves. They are moral protoplasm (in the true and 

 Aristotelian sense). They are the germ, though only 

 the germ, of goodness. 



When once, however, we have shut out this in- 

 terpretation of Mr. Kidd's doctrine of religion, it is 

 very hard indeed to say what the doctrine means. 

 Religion works powerfully, but irrationally; that is 

 all we are told. It sounds as if religion were a sort 

 of white magic or hypnotic influence. It sounds like 

 a revival of opinions held by wise men under the 

 Roman Empire, according to Gibbon, when all re- 

 ligions " were considered by the people as equally 

 true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the 

 magistrate as equally useful" Religion serves the 

 public weal ; religion augments altruism ; the Chris- 

 tian religion in particular attains its ends by a sweeping 

 dogma of human equality. But how Christianity or 

 any other religion captures the wills of human beings, 

 of that we have no explanation. And when we find 

 that Mr. Kidd, in view of the scramble for Africa, 

 and of the taking of the black races under white tute- 

 lage, thinks that Christianity must consent to modify 



