Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/262

248 has overtaken them will have become a commonplace of Western Civilization" (p. 13; for similar utterances see pp. 82 and 140).

Relying upon the "evolutionary hypothesis," and accepting in the main the views of Weismann (pp. 31-67), Mr. Kidd concludes that the principle of evolution is "efficiency in the future " (p. 53), or "projected efficiency" (p. 65). "In the struggle, as we now begin to see it, the interests of the individual and the present alike are presented as overlaid by the interests of a majority which is always in the future " (p. 53). Having accepted, or rather formulated, this principle, Mr. Kidd applies it directly to society as a political ideal. Accordingly, a survey of political history (Chaps. VII-IX) seems to him to prove that, "in the struggle the winning conditions are those of a people who already most efficiently bear on their shoulders in the present the burden of the principles with which the meaning of a process infinite in the future is identified" (p. 345); and, "in the development in progress under our eyes in Western history, we are regarding the main sequence of events along which the meaning of the cosmic process in human history is descending towards the future " (p. 398).

The very vagueness, as it seems to me, with which Mr. Kidd uses such words as "process," "development," "the future," etc., (notice the phrase "the process which is in progress in the evolution of society," p. 146, and the marvellous sentence quoted above from p. 398), makes an appeal to the imagination. Just now it is a very popular belief that we are all "travelling upward to Zion," and that somehow great things are in store for the race. On this popular idea, indeed, Mr. Kidd, I think, leans for support, and at the outset it is necessary to examine into its value.

The power of self-criticism (regarded by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and indeed all philosophers, as belonging to the very nature of mind) carries with it the power of enlargement or expansion of mind. Mr. Kidd thinks that this conception of enlargment is due to the discovery of evolution; but it is in fact as old, or almost as old, as philosophy, and was even declared by Plato to make science and philosophy possible. When this radical fact of self-criticism is expressed (inadequately, I believe) in terms of time, there arises the doctrine, attributed by Mr. Kidd to evolution, that the present ought never to be ascendant but always subordinate to the future. Not the truth, but only the inadequate expression of it, comes under scrutiny here.

The 'future,' strictly taken, is necessarily future. It is not Heaven, since in course of time Heaven becomes present. The future is Heaven minus all but the time factor; hence, to realize the future, i.e., to make the future a present reality, is a contradiction in terms. The future, strictly considered, is not therefore a conceivable ideal, and gets a secondary value by the presence of elements illogically thought into it.

It would seem as if Mr. Kidd were himself aware of the abstract character of the merely future, and therefore speaks of "the future and the universal" in contrast with "the individual and the present" (pp. 58-59),