GERMAN BIOLOGY. 



By p. a. Taverner. 



It may seem out of place to use the pages of a 

 scientific journal for the expression of international 

 recrimination, especially during the heat and pre- 

 judice of war; but one phase of the Hun's hunnish- 

 ness is a direct challenge to modern biology and 

 should have a biological answer. 



The position of the German scientist is something 

 as follows: Nature evolves to higher planes through 

 struggles between competing forms and the conse- 

 quent triumph of the strong through the relentless 

 elimination of the less fit. Man is an animal and 

 war is as much a biological necessity for his develop- 

 ment as it is for that of the lower creation. There- 

 fore, for the future benefit of the human race, weak 

 powers must give way to more virile expanding 

 ones, permitting them to sow the earth with the seed 

 of a superior race and culture. Political might is 

 thus right, weakness the greatest wrong, and for- 

 bearance towards the weak enervating sentimentality 

 and the betrayal of the human race. 



The reasoning is characteristically Teutonic in its 

 blind confidence in its own logic. Other schools of 

 thought on reaching so monstrous a conclusion would 

 pause and retrace their mental steps to see where 

 they had departed from the direct path of truth to 

 land in this unthinkable quagmire. Not so the Ger- 

 man. To him the laws are immutable and if the 

 result shocks our senses it is our standards that 

 require revision. They point to their premises and 

 to the conclusion, never doubting for a moment the 

 reasoning between. 



The deductions are admirably direct and clear to 

 the German intellect but here as elsewhere the 

 Teuton neglected to consider the human element. He 

 can handle ohms and watts and foot-pounds admir- 

 ably, but whenever he has attempted to estimate the 

 strictly human equation he has lamentably failed. 

 In this case he failed to perceive that biological laws 

 apply only to the biological (the physical) side of 

 man; that man is of dual nature and moral 

 development is as necessary to his well being as is 

 his body. Man may be an animal but he has de- 

 veloped something that no other animal possesses. 

 He has a moral sense and whether you call this 

 "soul " or merely "community instinct" it is an 

 absolute necessity to his communal existence. With- 

 out it, civilization, and the power over nature 

 obtained through mutual assistance and confidence, 



could not persist. Biological evolution of the 

 physical body may produce the super-beast, never 

 the super-man ; that can only be the result of a 

 ccncurrent and equal development of the moral 

 being, and the two are diametrically opposed to 

 each other, one being the result of absolute selfish- 

 ness, the other of unselfishness. 



It would thus seem that we have only discovered 

 the pathway to advancement to find that we cannot 

 use the knowledge to our own improvement and the 

 way is barred against us. There are many truths 

 we can see without being able to consciously 

 profit by them. It is undeniably better that one 

 should suffer rather than many, yet we cannot allow 

 any justification for canibalism. Old age is a drag 

 upon the body politic. It consumes and can not 

 produce, but we cannot therefore advocate the 

 killing of our grand-parents. These things are 

 against public policy and however apparent their 

 advantage in certain directions, they would cause 

 incalculably greater racial harm through the conse- 

 quent deadening of sensibilities and destruction of 

 mutual confidence. 



These are the things that German science failed 

 to perceive. That however admirable natural laws 

 are in themselves there are certain of them that we 

 cannot consciously take advantage of. The great 

 compensation to this, however, is the fact that bio- 

 logical laws work in spite of us. We have not 

 developed our physical being consciously so far, nor 

 need we in the future; Nature will take care of that 

 without our assistance. Our moral development on 

 the contrary is in our own keeping, if we look after 

 that side of our nature. Nature will do her duty 

 with the rest. In cur bolstering up the weak and 

 caring for the dependent it may appear that we are 

 working at cross purposes with our own physical 

 good, but 



"Though the mills of the gods grind slow 

 they grind exceeding fine" 



and the evolution of the morally as well as the 

 physically fit is continuing. War at times is a good 

 thing, but only after every possible effort to avoid it. 

 It is eliminating the morally unfit now that their per- 

 nicious doctrines may not contaminate the world 

 and cause devolution, in place of evolution. 



Nov. 5, 1918. 



