pearl: biology and war 353 



high principles have absolutely nothing to do with the reasons for 

 his fighting. They serve a wholly different and eiuch more useful 

 and admirable purpose, in that they justijy instead of explaining 

 his belligerency. The explanation of why men fight is very 

 simple. It is, first, because their kind of people is different from 

 other kinds; second, because they want to make sure that their 

 kind shall either maintain or improve its status in the world, and 

 that which is thought to ensure most certainly the maintenance 

 and extension of group differences in the widest sense is relative 

 politico-social domination by the group ; and third, because of a 

 general physiological law that certain emotions tend to lead to 

 action. So long as men are capable of becoming enraged there is 

 potential danger of a fight. 



THE biological CONSEQUENCES OF WAR 



Any discussion of the consequences of war, from a biological 

 standpoint, demands as a first requisite the consideration of 

 natural selection in relation to war, or, as it is perhaps more com- 

 monly put, ''Darwinism and war." German philosophers of all 

 degrees of attainment have been particularly addicted to specu- 

 lation in this field. The view commonly held is that in war we 

 have practically the only existing agency of natural selection 

 operating with full vigor upon the human species. It is contended 

 that when two nations engage in warfare with each other the 

 principle of the survival of the fittest accompanies the operation 

 with all its traditional crudity and finality. No better exposition 

 of this viewpoint can be found than that set forth by my friend 

 and colleague, Vernon Kellogg, in his remarkable book Head- 

 quarters Nights, from the after-dinner remarks of the distinguished 

 German biologist who figures in the narrative under the name 

 "Professor Von Flussen." Kellogg expounds the philosophy of 

 war after Von Flussen in the following words: 



The creed of the AUmacht of a natural selection based on a violent 

 and fatal competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals; 

 all else is illusion and anathema. The mutual-aid principle is recog- 

 nized only as restricted to its application within limited groups. For 

 instance, it may and does exist, and to positive biological benefit, within 



