And now let us turn to Mr. Kidd himself. The object of his book is to vindicate supernatural religion by exhibiting it as advantageous to its possessors in the social struggle for existence. He endeavours to make good his position by two distinct lines of argument. The first of these is that the social struggle for existence, though it produces progressive communities, and communities fitted to endure, is injurious to the majority of those who at any given time are engaged in it, and benefits only a minority, described by him as “_the power-holding classes_.” This minority, according to his account, could always, if it pleased, as it has pleased in all former ages, defend its position and keep the majority in subjection; but it is now beginning, under the pressure of a religious impulse, to surrender to its inferiors voluntarily advantages which they could never have extorted from it; and in this great fact our hope for the future lies. Such is one of the two main portions of Mr. Kidd’s message to the world; and here follows the other, which will be found to be fundamentally inconsistent with it. “_Man_,” if he had chosen to do so, Mr. Kidd maintains—and this assertion {22} is repeated by him with the utmost precision and emphasis—could at any period in his history have “_suspended the struggle for existence_” and “_organised society on a socialistic basis_”; and seeing that the struggle for existence, although essential to progress in the long-run, is injurious to the majority of each generation that takes part in it, man, if his chief guide had been reason or self-interest, would have been suspending this struggle constantly for the sake of his own present advantage, and leaving the future to take care of itself. Now, seeing that he does not, as a fact, pursue this obviously reasonable course, it follows that some power opposed to reason must have withheld him; and this power, argues Mr. Kidd, can be nothing else than religion. Here, he says, are the two functions of religion in evolution. It induces man to submit to the hardships of the evolutionary struggle, at the same time it redeems him from them by softening the hearts of the minority.