Mr. Kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be eminently discouraging. If he worked it out logically, his argument, I think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in the struggle for existence. It would be far more consistent to say that the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was the cause. Altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of the primary characteristics of mankind. Now, it is, of course, true that those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits upon our progress. The raw material limits the product; and the new-born baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot convert it into tissue of gold. So much is undeniable. We, it is said, have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and I have sometimes regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. The course of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer methods of aerial travelling. However, as things were, the choice was apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both, perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines. The speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. I mention it only by way of illustrating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by "heredity". We have to be content with walking instead of flying; and similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating, drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated. No material change can possibly be made in this system within any period to which we can look forward. To regret these limitations is just as idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our voyages to the moon. They are part of the primary data of the problem with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the universe. But when we go on to ask how far this limits any possibilities of achieving really desirable, because distinctly conceivable results, I say that we have ample room for hopes large enough to animate our loftiest desires. We inherit, it is true, certain faculties which scarcely alter, or do not perceptibly alter, for the better. We do not see or smell or hear better than the savage, and in some of these faculties we are surpassed by the dog. We inherit also certain intellectual powers, and, if they improve, the improvement is so slow as to be perceptible only after many generations.