APPENDIX D 239 



would have performed intellectual feats as great ; but had Aristotle 

 or Plato received the training of the cave-men, great feats would 

 have been impossible to them. They would have died unknown 

 to fame. Moreover, such feats as were performed by the Greeks 

 would not have been recognised as great among prehistoric peoples, 

 and such intellectual giants, but physical weaklings, of the modern 

 world as Darwin and Spencer would have earned, and in that 

 state of society deserved, the contempt of their fellows. 



Mr Herbert Spencer attributes much of the contents of man's 

 mind to the transmission and accumulation of acquired mental 

 characters. Thus he attributes the altruistic feelings to this cause, 

 and anticipates a happy future for man by their continued 

 increase. Mr Benjamin Kidd — whom I confess I have a little 

 difficulty in taking seriously — on the other hand, attributes these 

 feelings to Natural Selection. He is very severe on Mr Herbert 

 Spencer, and writes : " The confusion of ideas, to which the 

 tendencies of the times give rise, finds remarkable expression in 

 Mr Herbert Spencer's writings." The tendencies of the times 

 seem to have confused Mr Kidd's own ideas to an even greater 

 extent, and it would have been well had he hearkened to Mr 

 Spencer's warnings against thinking in abstract terms. 



As already indicated in this Journal, Natural Selection implies 

 elimination of the unfittest, and Mr Kidd has failed to record a 

 single death as due to the absence of this feeling in him who 

 perished, and the presence of it in him who survived. Having 

 regard to the foregoing, is it not abundantly evident that the 

 altruistic feelings have not undergone evolution at all in man, 

 neither by the transmission of inborn characters nor that of 

 acquired characters ? As I say, the child of a philanthropist, if 

 reared by West African savages, might well be a fiend in cruelty, 

 he certainly would have no philanthropic tendencies, as we under- 

 stand them ; the child of a cannibal, properly trained, might well 

 develop into a philanthropist; and surely that which may be 

 entirely lapsed or developed in a single generation cannot properly 

 be regarded as a direct product of evolution. Like patriotism or 

 devotion to a particular religious system, or a knowledge of 



