NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 85 
he stands, — except in the extreme form which characterizes his 
theory. 
Nietzsche, like many another critic, drives out a theory at the 
front door only to let it in at the rear. Self-denial and self- 
sacrifice, the products of slave-morality, are to be despised, — 
yet every individual, he holds, is to deny himself the gratification 
of certain impulses that he may attain greater future life and 
power. Likewise the aristocracy of the present generation are to 
become dionysians in the interest of the super-man of the future, 
— but Nietzsche provides no sanction for such sacrifice, save an 
appeal to the law of cosmic evolution. Such a sacrifice has no 
rational sanction, however, according to his theory, and all super- 
rational sanctions are tabooed. 
Nietzsche contributed to the development of the doctrine of 
passive social adaptation by emphasizing the relativity of ethical 
ideals, but this had been done previously by Comte and Spencer. 
He went to the extreme, however, in his devaluation of all values. 
The brief outline and few quotations given above indicate how 
great emphasis our author placed on the power of individual 
initiative, thus paving the way for a reaction against the laissez 
faire tendency growing out of the first application of scientific 
methods to social phenomena. In this way he has contributed 
very greatly to the development of the doctrine of active adapta- 
tion in all its phases. 
The philosophy of Nietzsche applied to the group fitted in 
admirably with the statecraft of Bismarck and together they have 
inspired the German people to become a dionysian group; but 
applied to the state this social theory loses its distinctive Nietzs- 
chean quality and takes on the character of the social theories of 
Kidd, Pearson, and Carver in which some of the very qualities so 
bitterly denounced by our author come to have supreme impor- 
tance. 
BENJAMIN Kipp (1858- ) 
Religion and Social Progress 
Nietzsche took as his point of departure Schopennauer’s will to 
live interpreted in terms of Darwin’s formula of struggle for 
existence between individuals. Kidd takes as his, a belief in 
