EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



whole community directed towards alleviating the 

 discomforts of life does much to counteract the ex- 

 hortations of the radicals and contributes much to 

 business and the efficiency of the employee. 



If this is a correct summary of the results of the 

 doctrine of social progress, when the laws of biolog- 

 ical evolution have been tempered with mercy and 

 pity for the weak and unfortunate, what has the hard 

 humanitarianism, which is the logical conclusion from 

 the thesis of the struggle for existence, done for the 

 world? This is the familiar, and until recently popu- 

 lar, doctrine of the superman. The Germans, in their 

 schools, in their pulpits, in their government, and in 

 their philosophy of Nietzsche, adopted it more unre- 

 servedly than any other nation. Unfortunately, they 

 did what no other people were willing to do; they put 

 this fallacious doctrine into practice. They plunged 

 the world into a war which was in every sense a strug- 

 gle for existence. 



