SOCIAL EVOLUTION 79 



The cause of both definiteness and permanence he finds in the pro- 

 longation of infancy, necessitating a relatively long-continued parental 

 care of offspring. The relations so established among near kindred 

 have conserved and strengthened the feelings of affection and the sense 

 of solidarity. Mr. Darwin recognized Mr. Fiske's theory as an impor- 

 tant contribution to the subject. It must be said in criticism, however, 

 that Mr. Fiske did not see all the implications of prolonged infancy, or 

 develop his theory into all its possibilities. Admitting that the pro- 

 longation of infancy was probably a factor in the evolution of stable 

 family relationships, and therefore played a part in strengthening the 

 social sentiments, we must remember that the actual social life and 

 solidarity of the gregarious group was probably a chief cause of the 

 prolongation of infancy itself. Demanding, as it did, a relatively keen 

 exercise of brain and nervous system in communication, imitation and 

 cooperation, it operated to select for survival those individuals that 

 varied in the direction of high brain power and its correlated long 

 infancy. But this is to say that society was a factor in the evolution 

 of man before man became a factor in the evolution of society, and the 

 difference is important. 



Moreover, Mr. Fiske's theory no more explained the actual origins 

 of sympathy and cooperation than Bagehot's and Darwin's theories had 

 done. Neither, for that matter, did Sutherland's account of " The 

 Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct," 4 although Sutherland got 

 somewhat farther back when he called attention to the reaction of 

 parental care of offspring upon the evolution of ganglia making up the 

 sympathetic nervous system. 



At this stage the Darwinian interpretation of social origins had 

 arrived when, in 1894, there was published a work which had an almost 

 sensational reception. Hailed as a new gospel by minds desiring above 

 all things to find some solid ground for religious convictions that had 

 seemingly suffered violence in the course of evolutionist warfare, this 

 book by scientific critics was treated with scant respect. These critics, 

 I venture to think, were in error. For, in fact, the " Social Evolution " 

 of Benjamin Kidd raised a profoundly important question, and gave 

 an answer to it which, while half wrong, was probably half right, and 

 the half that was right was a real and important contribution to knowl- 

 edge. Stated in the fewest possible words, Mr. Kidd's query was this : 



Since natural selection saves the few and kills the many, why does 

 not the great majority of mankind try to curb competition and put an 

 end to progress? Thus presented, Mr. Kidd's question is the radical 

 and fearless form of a question which socialism asks in a form that, by 

 comparison, is conservative and half-hearted. And Mr. Kidd's answer, 



4 Published in 1898, a worthy product of Australian scholarship, which its 

 author described as largely a detailed expansion of the fourth and fifth chap- 

 ters of " The Descent of Man." 



