RATS AND MEN 2>^2 



boring peoples. The history of successful coloniza- 

 tion has shown that peaceful penetration under a po- 

 litical and commercial organization which yields mu- 

 tual advantage to all concerned is, in the long run, 

 the most stable form of national expansion. And 

 where these methods have failed, as they have so 

 often, the reason is usually to be found in reversion to 

 antisocial practices somewhere in the program. 



Woodbridge has said, "Human living is a moral 

 event." It is also a natural event. From the stand- 

 point of this discussion it is not necessary to pass be- 

 yond the range of the natural in order to see that it is 

 a moral event. 



The preparation of myself for future living, con- 

 sciously, deliberately, purposefully, by well-chosen 

 discipline, is a thing which apparently the rat cannot 

 do. On a higher plane of behavior my own foreknowl- 

 edge of the probable future consequences of my action 

 and especially of the effects of conduct upon character 

 is a strictly biological process in one of its aspects. 

 This process may have moral value, but it is not the 

 task of the biologist — as biologist — to evaluate the 

 process from that standpoint. 



We may pass beyond the range of the method of 

 natural history by mathematical technique, or into 

 the fields of aesthetics, ethics, religion, philosophy, 

 where some other technique is more serviceable, and 

 so perhaps gain much more than we can hope to win 

 by close adherence to the method of natural science. 



