SOCIAL EVOLUTION 81 



that primordial faith in the possibilities of life which was born, and 

 generation after generation is re-born, of success in the struggle for 

 existence; which may gather about itself all manner of supplementary- 

 beliefs, including a belief in spirits and in gods, but which will persist 

 as the deepest and strongest motive of life after science has stripped 

 away from it all its mystical and theological accretions? I hope to 

 show that such is the fact. So believing, I accept as a positive contri- 

 bution to the theory of human evolution Mr. Kidd's proposition that 

 religion, a thing deeper and more elemental than reason, has been a 

 chief factor in social evolution. 



The mention of socialism, when referring to the theories of Benja- 

 min Kidd, may serve to remind us of two further contributions to the 

 Darwinian theory of society still to be mentioned. The Marxian social- 

 ist who has taken trouble to read Mr. William Hurrell Mallock's Ameri- 

 can lectures on socialism, 5 will not be disposed to admit that Mr. Mal- 

 lock is a competent student of social phenomena. Before passing 

 judgment, however, he should examine Mr. Mallock's " Aristocracy and 

 Evolution," a suggestive and really important work, published in 1898. 

 In this book Mr. Mallock rises above his habit of literary trifling, and 

 digs somewhat below his prejudices, to examine not only fairly, but 

 also cogently, and with illumination, the phenomenon of personal abil- 

 ity as a factor of social achievement. Distinguishing between a struggle 

 for existence merely, and a struggle for domination, he contends that 

 progress in any legitimate sense of the word is attributable to the 

 struggle for domination. No one, I think, can go far in sociological 

 study without seeing that this is a significant distinction for purposes 

 of historical interpretation. 



One need not, however, draw the conclusion that democracy is neces- 

 sarily antagonistic to progress, as Mr. Mallock does. He says: 



The human race progresses because and when the strongest human powers 

 and the highest human faculties lead it; such powers and faculties are embodied 

 in and monopolized by a minority of exceptional men; these men enable the 

 majority to progress, only on condition that the majority submit themselves 

 to their control.' 



No student of social evolution would be less likely to dispute these 

 propositions than Mr. Francis Galton, who, in fact, in his studies of 

 natural inheritance and hereditary genius, has done more than any 

 other investigator to establish them on a broad inductive basis. And 

 after Mr. Galton, no investigator has made more valuable studies in this 

 field than Mr. Karl Pearson, and no one more unreservedly than he 

 accepts the conclusion that superiority is necessary to social advance and 

 that personal superiority is a fact of heredity. Yet Mr. Pearson con- 



e Delivered in 1906; published 1907 as "A Critical Examination of 

 Socialism." 



6 " Aristocracy and Evolution," p. 379. 



