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THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



■order to trace the phylogenetic mean- 

 ing of injustice we need go no farther 

 back than to the paleozoic example of 

 Allosaurus pouncing upon astonished 

 beasts that were behaving themselves 

 with propriety according to the very 

 best of Mesozoic standards, although 

 these very same beasts were largely 

 engaged in pouncing upon other beasts. 

 It is true that still earlier injustice is 

 represented in the failure of certain in- 

 organic elements to obtain good posi- 

 tion when responding to The Periodic 

 Law, and a still later and more familiar 

 example is observed in the act of a 

 bluefish swallowing a herring. 



No one country is more responsible 

 than any other one country for the 

 present European war. It is the cul- 

 mination of effort between two chief 

 ■dominating types of varietal hybrids, 

 •each seeking to exercise supreme con- 

 trol over the other in response to dic- 

 tation by natural law. Germany hap- 

 pened to start just in advance of the 

 word "Go!" because she had first 

 reached the limit of human endurance, 

 a purely psychological phenomenon. 

 Resort to arms means bankruptcy of 

 diplomatic resource, although Ger- 

 many's assets in culture represented a 

 sum total in progress that is not 

 equalled by the assets of any other 

 nation at the present time. 



We must remember that even 

 Jesus reached the limit of human en- 

 durance, and entered voluntarily into 

 warfare. It was when He found the 

 money changers in the Temple. There 

 will always be money changers in the 

 temple. 



The Prince of Peace, the Jew, the 

 democrat, taught however that the law 

 of mutual dependence is more desirable 

 for moral agents than is the law of 

 struggle for supremacy. 



When the present war is over, noth- 

 ing will have been gained excepting 

 nature's points of limiting population 

 in the interest of food supply, and the 

 trimming back of exuberant new 

 growth that was approaching cultural 

 limitations too rapidly. Culture under 

 conditions of peace leads animals and 

 plants quickly to their protoplasmic 

 limitations. In the case of man, breed- 

 ing is inhibited, and there is marked 

 increase of insanity, genius, tubercu- 



losis, worklessness, cancer, and high 

 cost of living. The bell rings mid- 

 night, and a new nation comes in the 



morning. 



To-morrow's nations, taking up the 

 subject from its biologic basis, and un- 

 derstanding its terms will so conserve 

 and direct the expenditure of energy of 

 a nation that men will attain to a high- 

 er mental and physical planes than have 

 been reached by people of the rather 

 wild growth of nations that has "flour- 

 ished precariously" upon the earth up 

 to the present time. 



Further than that, the Secretary of 

 Eugenics in the Cabinet of The Monis- 

 tic Unity State, who is to be engaged in 

 the duty of placing certain selected na- 

 tions in alignment for the purpose of 

 obtaining particularly promising 

 hybrid combinations, will amuse his 

 children gathered about the atomic 

 lamp after dinner, by reading to them 

 the history of sentimental objections 

 that were raised against the simplest of 

 family eugenics away back in the twen- 

 tieth century. 



Man in his present semi-domesti- 

 cated condition is the only animal that 

 is persistently engaged in destroying 

 his own kind. This he does because he 

 has not as yet learned what to do with 

 the surplus population under present 

 methods of living. He calls it an act 

 belonging to higher intelligence. The 

 poet cannot help him, because the poet 

 can only join Milton in asking "what 

 can war but war breed?" The 

 preacher cannot help him, nor can the 

 teacher if we may judge from the fact 

 that five minutes after the sound of the 

 1914 war was heard, not one preacher 

 or teacher remained with his head an 

 inch above the level of the ground of 

 his own country. At the first alarum 

 preacher and teacher skurried back 

 under the cover of their financial pro- 

 tectors, and from that point of vantage 

 barked vociferously at the enemy. 

 Apparently Science is to give the last 

 message to man. It will not attempt 

 to explain upon which side of a conflict 

 the soldiers are in a state of grace. It 

 will simply give man a statement of 

 his case, and man may then develop 

 divinely in the sunshine of that full 

 sympathy which belongs to brotherly 

 love incited by Darwin's doctrine of 

 mutual dependence. 



