2QO FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



their scale of expenses. Therefore the foolish pros- 

 perous man will tell the artizan that though richer 

 he is no better off not a bit always on the 

 wrong side of the account; and what to do with 

 the boys ! A distribution of society into separate 

 compartments tends thus to intensify struggle and 

 to increase the total output. 



The very fact that biology offers social science this 

 second suggestion, in favour of struggle, shows in a 

 crucial instance the unreliableness and self-contradic- 

 toriness of the biological lawgiving. If society is an 

 organism, man ought to live for the general good. If 

 struggle for existence is the true law of moral and 

 social advance, then it is our duty to fight "for 

 our own hands " with all our might. Which view is 

 authoritative? Both cannot be; yet both are "the 

 teaching of biology." 



It may seem that any attempt to make room for 

 struggle is equally inconsistent with that higher 

 evolutionism based on reason, to which we have 

 pointed. If reason promulgates a doctrine of the 

 social organism, must not reason too feel nonplussed 

 by the assertion that nature teaches the necessity of 

 struggle ? Yet, at the least, the philosopher's study 

 of reason has prepared him to hear of an intenser 

 struggle where conscious life prevails. He sees how 

 self-consciousness draws a more definite line round 

 the individual, making each organism a universe in 

 itself, a microcosm, as no irrational creature is or 

 could be. He perceives that the requirement some- 

 times addressed to man is foolishness that he should 

 behave as a mere part in a larger social organism. It 

 is idle to talk of such things. Self-consciousness puts 



