EVOLUTION AND MANKIND. 2y7 



(1823-1913), who independently arrived at similar conclusions. 

 The views were championed by Huxley (1825-1895) and by 

 Haeckel. Further details regarding Darwin's hypothesis will be 

 discussed in the next section. 



Natural Selection, War and Nationality. 



It has been well said that some " modern philosophers explain 

 and justify human conduct after a visit to the monkey-house at 

 the Zoological Gardens, or from observ'ations on the family life 

 of rabbits"* However, it is easy to pass from analogy to argu- 

 ment, often with disastrous results. The biological justification 

 of war is the most notable instance of a zoological analog)' that 

 has been presented as a deduction from scientific law. It has 

 seized the imagination of the German nation, revelling in material 

 prosperity. General von Bernhardi, in his book. " England ;is 

 Germany's Vassal," states this view definitely. 



Wherever we look in Nature [he writes] we lind that war is a 

 fundamental law of development. This great verity, which has betn 

 recognised in past ages, has been convincingly demonstrated in modern 

 times by Charles Darwin. He proved that Nature is ruled by an unceasing 

 s.truggle for existence, by the riglu of the stronger, and that this struggle 

 in its apparent cruelty brings about a selection eliminating tiie weak and 

 the unwholesome. 



Again, Bernhardi writes 



The natural law to which all the laws of Nature can be reduced, is 

 the law of struggle. . . . From the first beginning of life war has 

 been made the basis of all healthy development. Struggle is not merely 

 the destructive, but the life-giving principle. The law of the stronger 

 holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to secure 

 for themselves the most favouralilc conditions of life. The weaker suc- 

 cumb. 



Briefly, then, this doctrine states that organisms rise to higher 

 levels, not on the stepping-stones of their dead selves, but on the 

 dead bodies of all that come in their way. Let us analyse this. 



A scientific law is an empirical generalisation from acquired 

 experience of a particular set of data ; it is not absolute. The 

 very expression of a scientific law must, of necessity, be tinged 

 with human interpretation. A .scientific law is the result of an 

 interaction, one factor being the whole world itself in all its 

 breadth and varying aspects, and the other the human mind, 

 always engaged in reducing facts of observation to language, 

 arranging in relative values and assigning a place according to 

 their relative value and importance in the world of knowledge. 

 All that we know of the extended world or reality is, that it is 

 " not-us." Chalmers Mitchell has well said that "the extended 

 world is a filtrate of the real through our faculties." As soon as 

 a proposition is removed from its context, that is, from the 

 assemblage of facts from which it was originally derived, and is 

 diverted and applied to some other set of facts, we are substitu- 

 ting an analogy for a truth, and not only deceiving ourselves but 

 also deceiving others. In other words, scientific laws are 



* Chalmers Mitchell: "Evolution and the War." p. i 



