life that we may raise the quality—the process of higher individualism which can only be attained by putting down the physical rivalry which induces only physical fitness, and substituting higher forms of rivalry which evoke higher fitnesses, measuring progress not in terms of lower material products or in terms of population, but in terms of highest human character; keeping down quantity of life with the direct object of limiting the proportion of energy which goes into the baser struggles of war and industry, in order that a larger proportion may be devoted to higher forms of effort, producing a race distinguished for high and varied mental and moral caliber. This society in which rivalry of life on lower planes is repressed can alone become socially efficient and coherent, because here alone will the bonds of common interest between individual and individual be numerous and strong. The way for a society to become socially efficient is to economize all force spent upon rivalry of physical life, so as to divert it into the maintenance of higher and more profitable forms of rivalry.
Mr. Kidd still seems to incline to the belief that "the anti-social qualities of men and not their social qualities, are what furnish the cohesive force of society." His arguments repose upon a sliding scale of phrases, by means of which he passes unseen from one position to another and thence to a third. We are all familiar with a conjuring performance entitled the "hat trick," in which the wizard takes out of a hat, which was previously shown to be empty, a string of sausages, a bowl of gold fish and other marvels which he had inserted by sleight of hand during the performance. Mr. Kidd's method is analogous. After elaborate analysis and argument, he discovers in a remote conclusion something which he had himself carefully inserted in an original premise, or he finds out some defect in a theory, which defect he has provided for by a defective definition of the theory. Religion is essentially ultra-rational beause he has chosen to define reason so as to exclude from it the emotional; it is supernatural because he has posited the supernatural. Socialism is unethical because he has chosen, in the teeth of history, to identify it with rationalism and, an
