do very noble work for the race because they teach its individuals to subordinate their own interests to the interests of mankind; but it is idle to say this of every form of religious belief. It is equally idle to pretend that this principle, which Mr. Kidd says lies at the base of all religions, does not also lie at the base of many forms of ethical belief which could hardly be called religious. His definition of religion could just as appropriately be used to define some forms of altruism or humanitarianism, while it does not define religion at all, if we use the word religion in the way in which it generally is used. If Mr. Kidd should write a book about horses, and should define a horse as a striped equine animal found wild in South Africa, his definition would apply to certain members of the horse family, but would not apply to that animal which we ordinarily mean when we talk of a horse; and, moreover, it would still be sufficiently loose to include two or three entirely distinct species. This is precisely the trouble with Mr. Kidd’s definition of religion. It does not define religion at all as the word is ordinarily used, and while it does apply to certain religious beliefs, it also applies quite as well to certain non-religious beliefs. We must, therefore, recollect that throughout Mr. Kidd’s argument on behalf of the part that religion plays he does not mean what is generally understood by religion, but the special form or forms which he here defines. Undoubtedly, in the race for life, that group of beings will tend ultimately to survive in which the general feeling of the members, whether due to humanitarianism, to altruism, or to some form of religious belief proper, is such that the average individual has an unselfish--what Mr. Kidd would call an ultra-rational--tendency to work for the ultimate benefit of the community as a whole. Mr. Kidd’s argument is so loose that it may be construed as meaning that, in the evolution of society, irrational superstitions grow up from time to time, affect large bodies of the human race in their course of development, and then die away; and that this succession of evanescent religious beliefs will continue for a very long time to come, perhaps as long as the human race exists. He may further mean that, except for this belief in a long succession of lies, humanity could not go forward. His words, I repeat, are sufficiently involved to make it possible that he means this, but, if so, his book can hardly be taken as a satisfactory defence of religion.