BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



building, and the great peoples of history have all been 

 inveterately warlike during the periods of their greatest 

 efflorescence. If, however, war was a factor in their crea- 

 tion, it was also the source of their destruction. In other 

 words, ability to survive in the supreme arbitrament of 

 war has been the final test of fitness of peoples and institu- 

 tions. Nevertheless, war seems rightly to be rated as the 

 greatest evil of the modern world, the chief obstacle to the 

 construction of a world order based on ideals of peace and 

 universal material prosperity. Much as such a goal may be 

 devoutly hoped for, it is still doubtful whether the human 

 animal is as yet sufficiently domesticated and ethically 

 perfected to make it attainable. Moreover, it is also doubt- 

 ful whether, if it were attained, we have sufficient knowl- 

 edge or sufficient means of social control to enable us to 

 preserve and perfect racial soundness and social institutions 

 in the absence of the crude, expensive, wasteful, and often 

 apparently senseless destruction provided by the final 

 verdict of war. 



We noted above that two distinctive traits of man were 

 his superior brain and his natural defenselessness. It is 

 obvious that man's greatest distinctiveness lies in his brain 

 power, for this is the chief source of that super-organic 

 or psycho-social environment which he alone has produced. 

 Superior brain and natural defenselessness would seem, in 

 the evolutionary process, to be set over against each other. 

 As the former develops, the latter becomes increasingly 

 feasible. Man's special superiority in the former has 

 enabled him to develop artificial means of protection and 

 adaptation. While man has undergone some modifications 

 of skin texture and color, hair texture and color, eye color, 

 nostrils, and other anatomical and physiological racial 

 differences in consequence of mutation, isolation, and 

 environmental selection, adjustment to habitat by cultural 

 devices is enormously more facile and efficient than by the 



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