140 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the institutions men have built up. It will be a survey of the stream 

 of social history, its whirls and eddies, rapids and still waters, and the 

 effect of each and all of its condtions on the heredity of men. The 

 survival of the fit and the unfit in all degrees and conditions will be 

 its subject matter. This book will be written, not roughly and hastily, 

 like the present fragmentary essay, still less will it be a brilliant effort 

 of some analytical imagination. It will set down soberly and statis- 

 tically the array of facts which as yet no one possesses, and the new 

 Darwin whose work it shall be must, like his predecessor, spend twenty- 

 five years in the gathering of 'all facts that can possibly bear on the 

 question.' When such a book is written, we shall know for the first 

 time the real significance of war. 



XLIV. If any war is good, civil war must be best. The virtues of 

 victory and the lessons of defeat would be kept within the nation. This 

 would protect the nation from the temptation to fight for gold or 

 trade. Civil war under proper limitations could remedy this. A time 

 limit could be adopted, as in football, and every device known to the 

 arena could be used to get the good of war and to escape its evils. 



For example, of all our States New York and Illinois have doubtless 

 suffered most from the evils of peace, if peace has evils which dis- 

 appear with war. They could be pitted against each other, while the 

 other States looked on. The 'dark and bloody ground' of Kentucky 

 could be made the arena. This would not interfere with trade in 

 Chicago, nor soil the streets in Baltimore. The armies could be filled 

 up from the ranks of the unemployed, while the pasteboard heroes of 

 the national guard could act as officers. All could be done in decency 

 and order, with no recriminations and no oppression of an alien foe. 

 We should have all that is good in war, its pomp and circumstance, the 

 'grim resolution of the London clubs,' without wars long train of mur- 

 derous evils. Who could deny this? And yet who could defend it? 



If war is good, we should have it regardless of its cost, regardless of 

 its horrors, its sorrows, its anguish, havoc and waste. 



But it is bad, only to be justified as the last resort of 'mangled, 

 murdered liberty,' a terrible agency to be evoked only when all other 

 arts of self-defense shall fail. The remedy for most ills of men is not 

 to be sought in 'whirlwinds of rebellion that shake the world,' but in 

 peace and justice, equality among men, and the cultivation of those 

 virtues we call Christian, because they have been virtues ever since 

 man and society began, and will be virtues still when the era of strife 

 is past, and the 'redcoat bully in his boots' no longer 'hides the march 

 of man from us.' 



It is the voice of political wisdom which falls from the bells of 

 Christmas-tide: "Peace on earth; good will towards men!" 



