nature was constant, or that the faculties did not change. Though I do not accept his view, any more than Mr. Kidd's, I do not see that he was inconsistent. I take the most obvious case to illustrate the point. No one can doubt that one of the most important influences in modern social evolution was the set of mechanical contrivances devised by Arkwright and Watt and their contemporaries. Without them, the enormous development of great cities, of a population of artisans, and of the bringing together of all quarters of the globe, would have been impossible. The inventions, again, were due to no moral purpose in the inventors. They wanted to make money, and represented what is called (I do not say justly) the most egoistic impulse of modern times. One condition, then, of the great social change was essentially intellectual. This does not mean that Watt was a cleverer man than Archimedes. I don't know whether he was or not; but it does mean that the mechanical sciences had improved; and, consequently, that Watt, though not possessed of intrinsically greater powers, was, in this direction, a more intellectual person. He had inherited the truths discovered by Archimedes and many generations of successors. That science should be efficient, it is not required that men should be greater geniuses than their predecessors; but simply that they should know more of the facts and laws of nature, and have, so to speak, better intellectual tools. Mr. Kidd thinks that the inability of a savage to count three does not prove him to be stupid, only to be without certain rules discovered by the higher races. Yet, he will not deny that by the help of arithmetic we can work out sums inconceivable to the savage; and that our power affects our whole social position. Does not the existence of a currency affect mankind; and if we could not count, could we make use of it?

I therefore hold that in many cases the causes of progress are "primarily intellectual". The mechanical discoveries of which I have spoken have revolutionised the whole world. I agree, indeed, fully, that the causes are not exclusively intellectual. A certain social condition—the existence, to say nothing more, of peace and order over wide regions—was as necessary as the intellectual condition to the development of commerce and manufactures. This, of course, implies the growth of corresponding sentiments, including, no doubt, what Mr. Kidd means by altruism. But the change may, and, I fancy, generally does, originate in intellectual movements. The new ideas shake the world. Reason, says Mr. Kidd, is the great disintegrating and egoistic force. I should say that reasoning is essentially altruistic: my discoveries are mentally discoveries for you; I cannot keep a truth for my private consumption, as I can keep a material product. But it is true, to use eulogistic instead of dyslogistic language, that reason is the great force of movement, and breaks up the old social conditions, not only by getting rid of the ultra-rational, but by spreading the power of the rational; and therefore it inevitably brings about a state of things in which the old moral impulses have to run in new channels; a narrow patriotism, to widen into a regard for the interests of other races; and the class distinctions which repose upon no reasonable ground, to disappear in favour of a wider humanity. When we are arguing about an organism, it is surely a mistake to fix our minds upon one aspect of the problem: to deny with Buckle the moral evolution, and with Mr. Kidd to disparage the intellectual evolution.

Mr. Kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be eminently discouraging. If he worked it out logically, his argument, I think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in the struggle for existence. It would be far more consistent to say that the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was the cause. Altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of the primary characteristics of mankind. Now, it is, of course, true that those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits upon our progress. The raw material limits the product; and the new-born baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot convert it into tissue of gold. So much is undeniable. We, it is said, have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and I have sometimes regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. The course of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer methods of aerial travelling. However, as things were, the choice was apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both, perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines. The speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. I mention it only by way of illustrating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by "heredity". We have to be content with walking instead of flying; and similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating, drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated. No material change can possibly be made in this system within any period to which we can look forward. To regret these limitations is just as idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our voyages to the moon. They are part of the primary data of the problem with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the universe. But when we go on to ask how far this limits any possibilities of achieving really desirable, because distinctly conceivable results, I say that we have ample room for hopes large enough to animate our loftiest desires. We inherit, it is true, certain faculties which scarcely alter, or do not perceptibly alter, for the better. We do not see or smell or hear better than the savage, and in some of these faculties we are surpassed by the dog. We inherit also certain intellectual powers, and, if they improve, the improvement is so slow as to be perceptible only after many generations. But then this intellect carries with it another power,—the power of inheriting thoughts, beliefs, methods of reasoning and rules of conduct. And, therefore, to the organic evolution is added the social evolution, which enables us to accumulate our vast spiritual inheritance. The inheritance is everything, or almost everything, that makes the distinctions between the civilised races of to-day and the wandering savages who roamed the fens and the forests which were supplanted by fields and towns. And this, I think, makes room enough for all reasonable aspirations, though it certainly does not open any prospect that we shall ever become gods or angels.

Thus, for example, we look with sorrow, sometimes with something like despair, upon the masses of the criminal or degraded population which grovels at the base of modern society. If we were bound to say, the crime and the stupidity are the necessary expression of the shape of the skull and the organisation of the brain; if we had therefore to infer that the only possible remedy is by so modifying the struggle for existence that the inferior forms may be killed off and a better breed of humanity take the place of the present; we should certainly feel that we were