Social evolution / by Benjamin Kidd.

  • Benjamin Kidd
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social evolution / by Benjamin Kidd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for long after, the working classes, it must be remem- bered, were almost without political rights of any kind. They lived like brutes, huddled together in wretched dwellings, without education and without any voice in politics or in the management of public affairs. Since then all this has gradually been changed. One of the most striking and significant signs of the times is the spectacle of Demos, with these new battle-cries ringing in his ears, gradually emerging from the long silence of social and political serfdom. Not now does he come with the violence of revolution foredoomed to failure, but with the slow and majestic progress which marks a natural evolution. He is no longer unwashed and illiterate, for we have universal education. He is no longer muzzled and without political power, for we have universal suffrage. With his advent, socialism has ceased to be a philanthropic sentiment merely. It still enlists the sympathies of many of the best minds, but it has become at the same time a direct appeal to the selfish instincts of a considerable portion of the com- munity wielding political power.1 The advent of Demos is the natural result of a long series of concessions, be- ginning in England with the passing of the Factory Acts, and the legalisation of combination, and leading gradually up to the avowedly socialistic legislation for which the times appear to be ripening. But so far all the changes are said to have only in- creased the power without materially lessening the misery of the working classes; and the goal towards which all efforts are directed seems still far off. Science may be 1 Communism, as M. de Laveleye very truly points out, tends to be specially attractive to two classes of men,—reformers and the workers. “ The former are drawn to it by a sentiment of justice, the latter by their own necessities.”
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