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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    different from that which the more impulsive spokes- men of science anticipated. It is not too much to assert that we are at the present time entering on an era in which we are about to witness one of the most striking revolutions in the aspect of the conflict which has taken place since it first began. There are two movements of opinion which have deeply affected the inner religious life of the present century. The first has its cause in what may be called the new revelation of the doctrine of evolution ; the other has received its impetus from the historic criticism of the Bible by various workers from Strauss to Renan. Whatever may be the opinion of individuals there can be little doubt that the tendency of both these movements has been generally considered to be on the whole profoundly anti-religious. There have been indeed many enlightened minds so far affected as to regard the new knowledge as having definitely and finally closed the controversy between Religion and Science by the annihilation of one of the antagonists. Neverthe- less, when all due allowance is made for these move- ments of opinion, there is a tendency of the time which ought not to escape the notice of an observant mind. Some conception of the direction in which we are travelling begins to shape itself when the present is contrasted with the past. Perhaps one of the first things which arrest attention on a comparison of the condition of thought outside the Churches on religious questions at the present and at the beginning of the century is the disappearance of that condition of mind represented at the period of the French Revolution by the assured and aggressive objector to religion. It is not that the dogmas of religion are more widely adhered to, but that this state of mind has been to a large
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