he sees that faith triumphant, and in turn facing a new enemy in its own household, heresies without number; history spreads its panorama; with the speed of Puck, Mr. Kidd girdles the earth, and everywhere "Projected Efficiency" is at work. With swimming head, the poor reader, like Emerson's Jacobin, who has heard too much of George Washington, cries, "Damn Projected Efficiency."
But more dispassionately let us interview this claimant to universal empire, and adjudge his claims.
Mr. Kidd sees " in the midst of our Western Civilization,". . . " a vast process of change." . . . "Hitherto all systems of political and social philosophy have revolved around one principle; namely, the interests of existing individuals." There is going on now, a shifting of the centre of significance in the evolutionary hypothesis.
"It is not the interests of those existing individuals, but the interests of the future" that make the new centre of significance. Up to the time of Mr. Kidd, evolutionary philosophers supposed that the fittest who survived in the struggle for life were those who best adapted themselves to the conditions of a present environment. This is still necessary but another factor is now added — adaptation to a future environment. Thus the " efficiency " which makes for survival is " projected " into the future. This, in a nutshell, is Mr. Kidd's discovery. The "winning qualities in the evolutionary process are those by which the interests of the existing individuals have been most effectively subordinated to those of the generations yet to be born."
This enables Mr. Kidd to present a striking antinomy. Between the interests of the present and the interests of the future there is an irreconcilable break. A sacrifice of the former to the latter is demanded. Yet this demand must not impair efficiency in the present. Just how Mr. Kidd would sacrifice the present without impairing present efficiency, he does not make clear, however.
The future must be "born out of a free conflict of forces such as has never been in the world before." Here Mr. Kidd makes one feel he is walking on solid ground. He sees that the ideal toward which the world is being carried "is that of a fair, open, and free rivalry of all the forces within the social consciousness — a rivalry in which the best organizations, the best methods, the best skill, the best abilities, the best government, and the best standards of action and belief, shall have the right of universal opportunity. ... It is the ideal which in its ultimate form must reach the limits of a stateless competition of all the individuals of every land, in which the competitive potentiality of all natural powers shall be completely enfranchised." Mr. Kidd strikes a noble and stirring note in his demand for the emancipation of every human power. He demands "a free conflict of forces towards equality of conditions, of rights and of opportunities." But, he insists, that is not the freedom of unregulated competition sought by the Manchester School of political economy. The doctrine of laissez-faire competition means a free fight in which unscrupulousness gains the day, choking all competition, bringing us " to the now universal tendency in modern industry to monopoly ownership, with the resulting accumulation of vast private fortunes through the enforced disadvantage of classes, of whole communities, and even of entire nations."
From the period of remorseless monopoly, now upon us, Mr. Kidd hopefully points to an "era in which increments in the private ownership of the instruments and materials of production which are unearned in terms of social utility shall form part of a common inheritance to which the energies and abilities of the individual shall be applied in conditions tending towards equal economic opportunity." This is the only really free competition. It will mean "the gradual organization and direction through the state of the activities of industry and production." This looks like Socialism, but Mr. Kidd has nothing in common with the current proposals of confiscation, and the regimentation of society. It is to be reached by the survival of those who adapt themselves to the conditions of this nobler future. Natural selection will destroy all opposing individuals and tendencies. Would that we could share this faith! But whether or not Mr. Kidd is the Moses to lead us out of the wilderness of present conditions into that Promised Land where all will enjoy equal opportunities, he, at least, is a prophet, holding up an ideal, and spurring us on to its attainment.
