Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/313

Rh there is no evidence that men of different races and degrees of civilization differ in individual intellectual power; social evolution is engaged in producing social efficiency, and it does this work by the exclusive agency of religion. The function of religion is to protect the condition of progress for a race by imposing supernatural and extra-rational sanction for conduct which reason would condemn but which is necessary for the progress of the race.

This is, in brief, the main thesis which Mr. Kidd invites us to examine. In order to get at the meaning of religion Mr. Kidd does not scorn the service of reason. Collecting definitions from a medley of thinkers, including Seneca, Comte, Matthew Arnold, Hegel, Huxley, Dr. Martineau, Mr. Kidd boils them to extract their fullest common measure. The unbiased observer who examined the medley of phenomena called "religious" would, he maintains, become possessed by one idea that "underneath all this vast series of phenomena with which he was confronted, he beheld man in some way in conflict with his own reason." (90)

It is important to recognize at the outset that Mr. Kidd's religion is wholly irrational. The systems it sets up are quite independent of all standards of intellectual truth. For religion is with him no mere vague instinct or sentiment of awe. It means religious systems with set dogmas, ordinances and ritual. Owing to this irrational impulse man everywhere is "possessed by the desire to set up sanctions for his individual conduct, which would appear to be supernatural against those which were natural, sanctions which would appear to be ultra-rational against those which were simply rational." (92)

Instead of being a "grotesque fungoid growth," these religions are the husks in which the seed of social progress is preserved and lies hid. They are the clothing of the race-preserving instincts. Let us clearly understand this position. Though Mr. Kidd tries to cast a mysterious halo of spiritual glow round this religious force it turns out to be nothing supernatural at all (though he says it is), but simply a racial feeling which