Social evolution / by Benjamin Kidd.

  • Benjamin Kidd
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

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

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over nature which is its con- sequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral degradation amongst the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole affair away as a desirable con- summation.^ It is the large body of thought which this kind of feeling inspires which is now stirring European society to its depths, and nothing is more certain than that it will have to be reckoned with. M. de Laveleye, a few years ago, put the feeling into words. The message of the eighteenth century to man was, he said, Thou shalt cease to be the slave of nobles and despots who oppress thee; thou art free and sovereign. But the problem of our times is : It is a grand thing to be free and sovereign, but how is it that the sovereign often starves ? how is it that those who are held to be the source of power often cannot, even by hard work, provide themselves with the necessaries of life V^^ Mr. Henry George only fairly presses the matter home by asking whither in such circumstances our progress is leading ; for, to educate men who must be condemned to poverty is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which men are theoretically equal is to stand a pyramid on its apex.^ Those who wish to see the end of the present condition of society have, so far, taken most part in the argument. ^ Government: Anarchy or Regimentation, by Professor Huxley, Nineteenth Century, May 1890. 2 Communism, by Emile de Laveleye, Contemporary Review, March 1890. ^ Progress and Poverty, Introduction.
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