In short, whatever Mr. Kidd says in reference to religion must be understood as being strictly limited by his own improper terminology. If we should accept the words religion and religious belief in their ordinary meaning, and should then accept as true what he states, we should apparently have to conclude that progress depended largely upon the fervor of the religious spirit, without regard to whether the religion itself was false or true. If such were the fact, progress would be most rapid in a country like Morocco, where the religious spirit is very strong indeed, far stronger than in any enlightened Christian country, but where, in reality, the religious development has largely crushed out the ethical and moral development, so that the country has gone steadily backward. A little philosophic study would convince Mr. Kidd that while the ethical and moral development of a nation may, in the case of certain religions, be based on those religions and develop with them and on the lines laid down by them, yet that in other countries where they develop at all they have to develop right in the teeth of the dominant religious beliefs, while in yet others they may develop entirely independent of them. If he doubts this let him examine the condition of the Soudan under the Mahdi, where what he calls the ultra-rational and supra-natural sanctions were accepted without question, and governed the lives of the people to the exclusion alike of reason and morality. He will hardly assert that the Soudan is more progressive than say Scotland or Minnesota, where there is less of the spirit which he calls religious and which old-fashioned folk would call superstitious.