(I 



300 EVOLUTION AND MANKIND. 



necessity of eating and the peril of being eaten are associated with much 

 that is wonderful in the instincts and apparatus of the animal kingdom, 

 with a development of courage and cunning, of alert senses, of muscle 

 and bone, armour and weapons, eyes and ears and nose, touch and taste, 

 colouration and form. But from the lower to the higher animals, there 

 has been a gradual replacement of a general unintelligent ferocity, ready 

 to grasp at everthing, friend or foe, that seems a possible food, to a more 

 specialised, more competent and at the same time more limited instinct 

 that comes into action only at the necessary call of hunger, and only with 

 regard to the normal prey. I suppose that the large carnivora, such as 

 lions, tigers and bears, are the highest examples of ferocious animals. 

 They, however, are not ferocious (apart from fear and sex) except when 

 they are hungry. Apparent exceptions are old lions and tigers, and possibly 

 a few species such as polar bears- But these, probably, are always 

 hungry : they have few chances of getting food, the old animals because 

 they have lost much of their strength, the polar bears because they have 

 to live on seals, creatures more active and intelligent than themselves, 

 and so they cannot run the risk of losing any chance that comes their 

 way. Apart from the obtaining of food, the strength, ferocity and weapons 

 f all the higher animals are employed only in defence of themselves, 

 their mates or their young, or in the rivalries of sex. . It is, 



moreover, too obvious a truth for elaboration that civilised man has 

 developed fashions of obtaining food, more economic and successful than 

 those involving the slaughter of his fellow-men. Looking through the 

 animal kingdom as a whole, and remembering that the vegetable kingdom 

 is as much subject and responsive to whatsoever may be the law of 

 organic evolution, I find no ground for interpreting Darwin's " meta- 

 phorical phrase," the struggle for existence, in any sense that would make 

 it a justification for war between nations.* 



Chalmers ^Mitchell then proceeds to state that he 



eould adduce from the writings of Darwin himself, and from those of later 

 naturalists, a thousand instances taken from the animal kingdom in 

 which success has come about by means analogous with the cultivation 

 of all the peaceful arts, the raising of the intelligence, and the heightening 

 of the emotions of love and pity. 



The arg-ument that wars are useful for reducing the excess or 

 undesirable population of an area, is also specious and scientific- 

 ally unsound. 



Turning now to a brief, general consideration of race and 

 nationality, it may be noted that the racial characters of cranial 

 index, colour of hair and eyes, and stature are on the average 

 inherited. When crossing between races occurs, it appears that 

 racial characters tend to blend, and individual characters tend to 

 segregate in transmission according to the Mendelian iformulae. 



The environment of the body and of the mind determine 

 national differences. The environment of the mind involves 

 conscious human intelligence and choice. The conditions of en- 

 \'ironment, which differ among nations, produce an effect on each 

 generation. To some extent there are the effects of climate, food, 

 air and social conventions, which probably affect chiefly the aver- 

 age character of a population, but among modern civilised 

 peoples the greatest effects follow from the influence of environ- 

 ment on mental and emotional qualities, such as those produced 

 by systems of education, the books read, the companionshij>s made 

 and the sy,stems of militar)^ service, all of which factors stamp 



* " Evolution and the War," pp. 40, 41. 



