The Science of Power. By Benjamin Kidd. (Methuen and Co.
Cs. net.)—Admirers of the,-,late Mr. Kidd's Social Evolution will welcome the piesent volume, which is concerned with further aspects of the same problems. Very briefly, his argument is that it is in the "social emotion" of co-operation, " the deep diapason of the social passion calling for renunciation," that we shall find the triumphant negation of the Prussian ideals of combativeness and brutality. Very literally, of course, is this true of the present world. For us " renunciation " has been the master-word of the times. Has our youth pleaded like Landor's sad Iphigenia, " Oh
Father, I am young and very happy " 9 He denies all. the Darwinianisms and Nietzschianisms—the race being to the swift and so forth—theories all of the " combative male," as he holds. He sees the future of the world in the hands of whichever race—organizing itself through education as have the Prussians, but to far different ends—will turn its thoughts to " social integration." The nation that will have the unselfish- ness to " live fifty years ahead," and work less for the existing than for the coming generation, would, he maintains, be irre- sistible. We fear, however, that his beliefs in education, conscious or through " social heredity," are too optimistic, as is also his enviable faith in the equality of all races—black, white, or yellow. Feminists will be interested to see how he reaches the conclusion that it is to women, as the natural and deeply instinctive guardians of the race, rather than to the much more individualistic, male, that the future must look.
Previous page
