Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/311

 MR. KIDD'S "SOCIAL EVOLUTION." central problem of social evolution as it presents itself to Mr. Kidd may be thus briefly summarized. Modern physiological science establishes as the first condition of all progress the maintenance of that struggle among the individuals of a race which continually eliminates the less efficient and enables the more efficient to survive and multiply. Any successful attempt to suspend the struggle and to secure the survival of the unfit members will not merely check further progress but will inevitably cause a deterioration of the race. Among the lower animals, nature, acting blindly and instinctively, insures the maintenance of the struggle. But when man emerges it is different. "Now at last, science stands confronted with a creature differing in this important respect from all that have gone before him. He is endowed with reason."

Now, when reason begins to look into this "struggle," it can find no justification for the pain and misery and brutality of such a mode of progress. "To the great mass of the people, the so-called lower classes, in the advanced civilizations of today, the conditions under which they live and work are still without any rational sanction." (67) So long as the masses are kept down under strong class government, their intelligence uneducated, they remain impotent. But modern conditions of progress demand that a larger and larger proportion of the race shall be brought into the keenest rivalry of life—this keen rivalry demands equality of opportunity for all individuals. Hence the modern democratic movement making for equalization of opportunity intensifies the "struggle," the rivalry of life, and improves the pace of progress. But this equalization of opportunity, by educating the intelligence of the masses and by placing an increased portion of political and social power in their hands, raises up an enemy of social progress.