THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 577 



large that the amount of exchange to be facilitated is great. Hence, 

 unquestionably, that integration of societies effected by war has been 

 a needful preliminary to industrial development, and consequently to 

 developments of other kinds Science, the Fine Arts, etc. 



Industrial habits too, and habits of subordination to social require- 

 ments, are indirectly brought about by the same cause. The truth 

 that the power of working continuously, wanting in the aboriginal 

 man, could be established only by that persistent coercion to which 

 conquered and enslaved tribes are subject, has become trite. An allied 

 truth is, that only by a discipline of submission, first to an owner, then 

 to a personal governor, presently to government less personal, then to 

 the embodied law proceeding from government, could there eventually 

 be reached submission to that code of moral law by which the cirilized 

 man is more and more restrained in his dealings with his fellows. 



Such being some of the important truths usually ignored by men 

 too exclusively influenced by the religion of amity, let us now glance 

 at the no less important truths to which men are blinded by the re- 

 ligion of enmity. 



Though, during barbarism and the earlier stages of civilization, 

 war has the effect of exterminating the weaker societies, and of weed- 

 ing out the weaker members of the stronger societies, and thus in both 

 ways furthering the development of those valuable powers, bodily and 

 mental, which war brings into play ; yet, during the later stages of 

 civilization, the second of these actions is reversed. So long as all 

 adult males have to bear arms, the average result is that those of most 

 strength and quickness survive, while the feebler and slower are slain ; 

 but when the industrial development has become such that only some 

 of the adult males are draughted into the army, the tendency is to 

 pick out and expose to slaughter the best-grown and healthiest ; leav- 

 ing behind the physically inferior to propagate the race. The fact 

 that among ourselves, though the number of soldiers raised is not rela<- 

 tively large, many recruits are rejected by the examining surgeons^ 

 shows that the process inevitably works toward deterioration. Where^. 

 as in France, conscriptions have gone on generation after generation^ 

 taking away the finest men, the needful lowering of the standard 

 proves how disastrous is the effect on those animal qualities of a race 

 which foro a necessary basis for all higher qualities. If the depletion- 

 is indirect also if there is such an overdraw on the energies of the 

 industrial population that a large share of heavy labor is thrown on 

 the women, whose systems are taxed simultaneously by hard work 

 and child-bearing, a further cause of physical degeneracy comes into 

 play: France again supplying an example. War, therefore, after a 

 certain stage of progress, instead of furthering bodily development 

 and the development of certain mental powers, becomes a cause of 



retrogression. 



toi.. 11. 37 



