8o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



not so much as tainted with socialism, is as fearless as his question. 

 Progress has no rational sanction. It is irrational and, from the stand- 

 point of reason, absurd. Man goes on multiplying, competing, fighting 

 and making progress because he is not rational and has no desire to be. 

 He lives not by reason, but by faith. He crucifies and kills himself to 

 improve the race, not because he is scientific, but because he is religious. 

 Perhaps it was because Mr. Kidd's thesis was paradoxical, that 

 theologians found in it something tangible and scientific men did not. 

 It should be possible now to look back upon it without prejudice. On 

 the face of it, it is an obvious fallacy, but back of fallacy lies a truth. 

 The fallacy consists in an unwarranted assumption that individuals 

 and families marked for extermination in the struggle for existence 

 are, in their own lifetime, aware of their impending doom. Let us 

 suppose that, of one hundred families now flourishing, ninety will be- 

 come extinct in the tenth generation, their places being filled by a 

 corresponding number of new families branching from the one success- 

 ful line. This would be natural selection at a rapid rate. Yet to 

 maintain this rate, only ten families have to drop out in any one gen- 

 eration, and ten new ones to appear. This means that, at any given 

 time, a ninety per cent, majority of all persons at the moment living 

 have an expectation of further life, the termination of which can not 

 be foreseen. The large majority, therefore, at any given time existing 

 think of themselves not as the unfit that must perish, but rather as the 

 fit selected to survive. 



This way of stating the problem, however, brings us face to face 

 with a peculiarly interesting truth, for the apprehension of which we 

 rightly may give generous credit to Mr. Kidd. Obviously, while no 

 family stock or race at any time existing can certainly know, or, while 

 it remains still vigorous, find sufficient ground to believe that it is 

 doomed to perish, neither can it certainly know that it is indefinitely 

 to survive. It does live, struggle, plan and achieve not altogether by 

 knowledge or by reason, but also in part by faith. It hopes, it expects 

 to endure. It believes in its future. 



This faith by which a race, a family, or an individual lives, is not 

 anti-rational, nor yet super-rational. It is rather sub-rational or proto- 

 rational. It is deeper, more elemental than reason — a fact of instinct 

 and feeling. It is faith in the possibilities of life, born of actual sur- 

 vival in the struggle for existence. The question, therefore, which Mr. 

 Kidd should have asked, and which we, reviewing his work, must ask 

 in his stead, is this : May we identify our elemental faith in the possi- 

 bilities of life with the tremendous social phenomenon of religion, 

 which, in all the ages of man's progress, has been one of his supreme 

 interests? Shall we perhaps find that, when reduced to its lowest 

 terms, to its essential principle, religion is not, as has been supposed, a 

 belief in gods, or in a supernatural, in any way conceived, but is rather 



