jeje) ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
one time.! “Species” is but a class term and a species can 
survive only through the survival of individuals. In a dynamic 
environment a species cannot persist without modification and if 
changes in the type occur there is no special advantage in keeping 
the same name. In the above illustration from Weismann, if 
brevity of life in the individual is advantageous to the species in 
its present struggle, it is advantageous to the individuals com- 
posing the species, for if nature did not terminate life when the 
individual had ceased to be of service to the group, the group as 
such would have to make way with it, that is, if the struggle for 
existence were sufficiently acute, even as happens in some 
species. The same thing holds true of man. Among some 
primitive tribes the aged are cast off to die. It would be of 
advantage to the individuals under such conditions if there were 
an inner principle which would bring life to an end as soon as 
such social disutility occurred as to lead to their destruction by 
the group. 
This theory of projected efficiency, calling for the sacrifice of 
the vast majority of living individuals to the good of unborn 
generations, gives Kidd the background for his emphasis on the 
need of a super-rational sanction which will hold the members of a 
group to their thankless but inevitable task. 
Reason, which in his conception is the cold calculating faculty 
that enables one to balance pleasures and pains and choose con- 
duct in the line of self-interest cannot furnish a sanction, for if 
allowed full sway it would lead to the establishment of some kind 
of socialistic or anarchistic scheme which would mean present 
gain though future disaster to the race? Reason is considered 
to be diametrically opposed to “ belief ” and “ ultra-rational.” 
There can be no such thing, according to our author, as a reason- 
able religion. Religion is not only super-rational but irrational. 
Mr. Kidd’s chief contributions to the development of the 
doctrine of adaptation are (1) emphasis on the development by 
inter-group conflict of the social and moral qualities which make 
1 His illustrations from social evolution, Social Evolution, chs. VI and VII, have 
no biological analogue. 
2 Tbid., pp. 67 ff. 3 Ibid., pp. 107 f. 
