hand and the disciples of
Weismann on the other. The popularity of Mr. Kidd's book was due to the
general drift of it. Just as Darwin's theory of evolution, with its
doctrine of the survival of the strongest, provided a scientific basis,
unwelcome to many, for aristocracy, Mr. Kidd's aim was to show that
evolution in its higher forms was in reality a survival of the weakest,
and thus provided a scientific basis for democracy--democracy by
constant implications being identified with some form of Socialism. To
me this book, which I examined with extreme care, seemed, in the
practical bearing, a piece of monumental claptrap, though it was
claptrap of the highest order, and was for that reason all the more
pernicious. Mr. Kidd, in dealing with the facts of social life, seemed
to me to be dealing not with facts, but clouds--clouds which suggested
facts, as actual clouds may suggest a whale or weasel, but which yet,
when scrutinized, had no definite content. To me this book rendered a
very valuable service, I found in it an epitome of everything against
which my own mind protested; and I soon set myself to prepare a series
of tentative studies in which certain of Mr. Kidd's positions were
directly or indirectly criticized. If I remember rightly, these were
published at intervals in the _Contemporary Review_; and their
substance, expanded and digested, appeared by and by in a volume which I
called _Aristocracy and Evolution_.

Of this volume, which was a criticism not only of Mr. Kidd, but of Mr.
Herbert Spencer also, the fundamental thesis was similar to that of
_Social Equality_, and of _Labor and the Popular Welfare_--namely, that
in proportion as societies progress in civilization and wealth all
appreciable progress, and the sustentation of most of the results
achieved by it, depend more and more on the directive ability of the
few; and this thesis was affiliated to the main conclusions of
evolutionary science generally. It was admitted that, within certain
limits, results achieved by the few were absorbed and perpetuated by the
many, though the activities of the originators might have ceased, and
that a proper definition of evolution pure and simple would be: "The
orderly sequence of the unintended." But, at the same time, it was shown
that an "orderly sequence of the unintended," though it is a part of
what we mean by progress, is a small part only, the major part still
requiring the intentional activities of the few, n