The Ideal State 223 



everywhere evident in our great cities, the increase 

 of the so-called criminal classes, and the prevalence of 

 drunkenness and vice in all sections of society. These 

 are only imperfections of passing phases of evolution, 

 which we believe will be slowly eliminated, and with 

 ever greater rapidity as the spiritual development 

 proceeds. It is with deep regret that one observes 

 the domination of Mr. Kidd's mind by that creed of 

 science rapidly declining to its fall under the search- 

 light of the higher criticism. Even the most scientific 

 of our zoologists have been forced by the most ex- 

 tended study of observed phenomena to conclude that 

 Natural Selection has never possessed and does not 

 now wield the power assigned to it by Darwin. It is 

 therefore impossible not to express surprise that Kidd 

 should make use of this law, which was the keystone of 

 the Nietzscheian arch, of the gospel of " Be hard," of 

 " The weaker go to the wall, and we shall help them to," 

 to support his own argument on behalf of spiritual 

 evolution, made possible to man through the operation 

 in his mind of the high ethical standard and self- 

 sacrifice of the teachings of the meek and lowly Jesus, 

 Who gave His own life to save mankind, in order that 

 they might learn the " pathway to Reality " by 

 means of sacrifice of the self — the assimilation of the 

 truth that self-abnegation is the only method of self- 

 realisation, and that the " ideal is the real." From 

 both points of view, therefore, we are entitled to con- 

 sider that Kidd in this instance has allowed his other- 

 wise strong logical faculty to be obscured by his devo- 

 tion to the now discredited Darwinian philosophy, 

 and which in this instance he has dragged in to 

 explain a condition of things to which in its essence 

 it was absolutely opposed. Therefore it will be con- 

 sidered justifiable to alter this second aphorism, and 

 in such a way as to allow of it still being acceptable to 



