302 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



imply any forsaking of this standpoint. The nation 

 or the race is determined to be its own untrammelled 

 self ; yet it is willing, nay it claims, to be one of the 

 great family of civilised mankind. The civilised 

 world moves essentially as a whole. What one race 

 gains, all share. Is it not plain that our posterity 

 will come to make the same assertion regarding the 

 whole of mankind ? Ultimately even the most back- 

 ward races must join the fellowship. Ultimately 

 even the least philanthropic must share the burden 

 of the weak. "We without them cannot be made 

 perfect." 



Human evolution then differs from evolution in the 

 organic world. It does not mean progressive diver- 

 gence of type from type, but progressive unifying, all 

 differentiation being strictly held subordinate to the 

 unity prescribed by reason. 



Does human evolution then mean progress ? As- 

 suredly man can frame the conception of progress, 

 and once he has done so, nothing will satisfy him 

 save steady progressive advance and improvement. 



Reason grasps this conception, and reason itself, 

 or the free development of intelligence, is certainly 

 one condition of historic human progress. Without 

 reason there can be no movement onwards or up- 

 wards at the more rapid pace at which history moves. 

 Very likely Bagehot's explanation is true (so far as it 

 goes) that reason was first emancipated among those 

 races which " happened " to have free political con- 

 stitutions, and acquired in politics the instinct of free 

 inquiry. The further question, what maintains prog- 

 ress ? or what leads to new advance ? needs no dis- 

 cussion. We need not, like Professor Ritchie, seek 



