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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    1 these who may have to determine the issue are without knowledge of the first principles of the struggle. They look in vain for any authoritative definition of the laws or principles which underlie it, for any clear indication as to which side is right and which is wrong, or for any definite teaching as to whither our Western civilisation as a whole is tending. Amongst other noteworthy aspects of the time not the least remarkable is the revolution which is silently taking place in men’s minds with regard to matters previously held to be more or less outside the sphere of political discussion. The alteration which is taking place in the standpoint from which religion is regarded is very remarkable. The change is not exclusively, nor perhaps even principally confined to those professing religion, and it affects men of different views in widely different ways. The outward indications might appear at first sight puzzling and conflicting in the extreme, and it is not until they are grouped and compared that they are seen to all belong to one wide and general movement of opinion. Within the Churches one of the signs of this change is visible in a growing tendency to assert that religion is concerned with man’s actual state in this world as well as with his possible state in the next; in the desire to dwell upon the features which ecclesiastical organisations have in common rather than upon those features in which they differ from each other ; and in the increasing tendency to assert that the Churches should be judged by their deeds rather than by their doctrines. We are beginning to hear from many quarters that the social question is at bottom a religious question, and that to its solution it behoves the Churches in the interests of society to address themselves. The head of
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