178 RAYMOND C. OSBURN Vol. XXII, No. 7 



ancestors became truly men" (Anatomical Record, Jan., 1918). 

 Thomson again says, "The appeal to human history, which the 

 militarists make confidently, has seemed to many to show that 

 civilization was born out of war. But scientific inquiry does 

 not confirm this conclusion." Havelock Ellis writes (1919) 

 "War probably began late in the history of mankind," and, 

 "War was a result, and not a cause, of social organization." 

 As Thomson points out, "The militarists' appeal to history is 

 not any more convincing than their appeal to biology. The 

 facts are against them in both fields." Finally we should point 

 out, as has been done by various biological writers, that war 

 really is a detriment to both sides, especially between advanced 

 nations, by destroying the best of the younger men, whom the 

 nations at war can by no means afford to lose. Thus war, 

 instead of being contributory to the selecting of the best and 

 the survival of the fittest, too often results in the survival of 

 the unfit on both sides, to the great detriment of the human 

 race. 



Thus no one has any cause to shudder at the mere term 

 "natural selection," since, to its gross misapplication as an 

 excuse for war, such as that made use of by ardent militarists, 

 the biologists have as much fault to find as any one. None but 

 the pre-war German philosophers would ever have agreed with 

 von Moltke that "war is a part of God's world order," and the 

 biologist, as much as any one, has a right to feel scandalized by 

 the crass misinterpretation of the selection theory which has 

 been placed upon it. 



In a state of nature it is undoubtedly true that "the weaker 

 go to the wall," if by the weaker we mean those that are the 

 least adapted to meet the complex problem of existence, but that 

 does not imply, even in lower animals, that there is usually 

 anything like war between individuals of the same kind. The 

 struggle is confined to the effort of each to maintain itself as 

 an individual, and where competition is keen some have a 

 natural advantage of organization over others and these can 

 better solve the problem of existence while the others fall by 

 the wayside. Of course, the term selection is unfortunate in 

 that in the minds of many persons it is involved with the idea 

 of conscious choice, but no biologist has any difficulty in 

 holding to a proper interpretation of the term. 



