354 pearl: biology and war 



single ant communities, but the different ant kinds fight desperately 

 with each other, the stronger destroying or enslaving the weaker. Sim- 

 ilarly, it may exist to advantage within the limits of organized human 

 gi-oups — as those which are ethnographically, nationally, or otherwise, 

 variously delimited. But as with the different ant species, struggle — 

 bitter, ruthless struggle — is the rule among the different human groups. 

 This struggle not only must go on, for that is the natural law, but it 

 should go on, so that this natural law may work out in its cruel, in- 

 evitable way the salvation of the human species. By its salvation is 

 meant its desirable natural evolution. That human group which is 

 in the most advanced evolutionary stage as regards internal organiza- 

 tion and form of social relationship is best, and should, for the sake of 

 the species, be preserved at the expense of the less advanced, the less 

 effective. It should win in the struggle for existence and this struggle 

 should occur precisely that the various types may be tested, and the 

 best not only preserved, but put in position to impose its kind of social 

 organization — its Kultur — on the others, or alternatively to destroy 

 and replace them. 



That this is a fair and typical exposition of the views of German 

 biological philosophers regarding war will be readily granted 

 without argument by any evolutionist who is familiar with the 

 literature in this field. The principle of natural selection was 

 seized upon by no one with greater avidity than the Germans. 

 The strictly mechanistic features of this doctrine, which Darwin 

 himself seemingly always felt to be a potential source of weakness, 

 were the very things which made the strongest appeal to the 

 Germans. In the hands of Haeckel, and particularly Weismann, 

 natural selection was developed into a complete philosophical 

 system of biology, in which any lack of biological evidence re- 

 garding the actual operation in nature of the basic principle w^as 

 more than compensated for by the wooden finality of the logic. 



As years went on the German statesmen and political philoso- 

 phers became acquainted with the content and possibilities of 

 what their biological confreres had by that time come to call with 

 considerable unction ''Neo-Darwinism." They presently saw 

 the great possibilities which the principle of natural selection of- 

 fered in fostering and developing in the minds of the people the 

 militaristic ideal, the will to conquer. For thirty years every 

 German school boy and girl has been taught what natural selec- 

 tion means. This same glorious principle that the fittest alone 

 shall survive, and its converse that the survivor is the fittest, have 



