Social evolution / Benjamin Kidd.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kidd, Benjamin, 1858-1916, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 374 pages)

Edition:

New edition with a new preface.

Other Title:

Social evolution

Place of Publication:

New York : Macmillan, 1895.

Summary:

One of the most remarkable epochs in the history of human thought is that through which we have passed in the last half of the nineteenth century. One after the other we have seen the lower sciences revivified, reconstructed, transformed by the new knowledge. The sciences dealing with man in society have naturally been the last to be affected, but now that the movement has reached them the changes therein promise to be even more startling in character. History, economics, the science of politics, and, last but not least important, the attitude of science to the religious life and the religious phenomena of mankind, promise to be profoundly influenced. The whole plan of life is, in short, being slowly revealed to us in a new light, and we are beginning to perceive that it presents a single majestic unity, throughout every part of which the conditions of law and orderly progress reign supreme. Nothing is more remarkable in this period of reconstruction than the change which is almost imperceptibly taking place in the minds of the rising generation respecting the great social and religious problem of our time. We have lived through a period when the very foundations of human thought have been rebuilt. That the moral law is the unchanging law of progress in human society is the lesson which appears to be written over all things. No school of theology has ever sought to enforce this teaching with the directness and emphasis which it appears that evolutionary science will in the future be justified in doing. In the silent and strenuous rivalry in which every section of the race is of necessity continually engaged, permanent success appears to be invariably associated with the ethical and moral conditions favourable to the maintenance of a high standard of social efficiency, and with those conditions only. No one who engages in a serious study of the period of transition through which our Western civilisation is passing at the present time can resist the conclusion that we are rapidly approaching a time when we shall be face to face with social and political problems, graver in character and more far-reaching in extent than any which have been hitherto encountered. These problems are not peculiar to any nationality included in our civilisation. But in the method of their solution, the social efficiency of the various sections of the Western peoples will probably be put to a severer test than any which it has yet had to undergo. Those who realise, however dimly, the immense part which the English-speaking peoples--if true to their own traditions--are not improbably destined to play in the immediate future of the world, will feel how great a gain any advance may be which enables us through the methods of modern science to obtain a clear perception of the stern, immutable conditions of moral fitness and uprightness through which alone a people can long continue to play a great part on the stage of the world. No other race has ever looked out upon such an opportunity as presents itself before these peoples in the twentieth century.

Contents:

The outlook

Conditions of human progress

There is no rational sanction for the conditions of progress

The central feature of human history

The function of religious beliefs in the evolution of society

Western civilisation

Western civilisation (continued)

Modern socialism

Human evolution is not primarily intellectual

Concluding remarks.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.