LIFE 369 



" The whole earth is mine, and no one shall rob me of 

 any corner of it," is the cry of civilised man. No nation 

 can go its own way and deprive the rest of mankind of 

 its soil and its mineral wealth, its labour-power and its 

 culture — no nation can refuse to develop its mental or 

 physical resources — without detriment to civilisation at 

 large in its struggle with organic and inorganic nature. 

 It is not a matter of indifference to other nations that the 

 intellect of any people should lie fallow, or that any folk ■ 

 should not take its part in the labour of research. It 

 cannot be indifferent to mankind as a whole whether the 

 occupants of a country leave its fields untilled and its 

 natural resources undeveloped. It is a false view of 

 human solidarity, a weak humanitarianism, not a true 

 humanism, which regrets that a capable and stalwart race 

 of white men should replace a dark-skinned tribe which 

 can neither utilise its land for the full benefit of mankind, 

 nor contribute its quota to the common stock of human 

 knowledge.^ The struggle of civilised man against 

 uncivilised man and against nature produces a certain 

 partial " solidarity of humanity " which involves a pro- 

 hibition against any individual community wasting the 

 resources of mankind. 



The development of the individual, a product of the 

 struggle of man against man, is seen to be controlled by 

 the organisation of the social unit, a product of the 

 struggle of society against society. The development of 

 the individual society is again influenced, if to a less 

 extent, by the instinct of a human solidarity in civilised 

 mankind, a product of the struggle of civilisation against 

 barbarism and against inorganic and organic nature. The 

 principle of the survival of the fittest, describing by aid of 

 the three factors of individualism, socialism, and humanism 

 the continual struggle of individuals, of societies, of 



1 This sentence must not be taken to justify a brutalising destruction of 

 human life. The anti-social effects of such a mode of accelerating the survival 

 of the fittest may go far to destroy the preponderating fitness of the survivor. 

 At the same time, there is cause for human satisfaction in the replacement of 

 the aborigines throughout America and Australia by white races of far higher 

 civilisation. 



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