4s Dr. G. W. Sahebtj [Feb. 14. 



established, and crescent from year to year — why do they then fall ? 

 If they can maJce a place for themselves, how much easier should it 

 not be to maintain it ? 



Two explanations, each falsely asserting itself to be rooted in 

 biological fact, have long Ijeen cited, and are still cited, in order to 

 account for these supreme tragedies of history. 



The first— cited by no less a thinker than Mr. Balfour the other 

 day — may claim Plato and Aristotle as its founders, and consists of 

 an argument from analogy. Races may be conceived in similar 

 terms to individuals. There are many resemblances between a society 

 — a " social organism," to use Herbert Spencer's phrase— and an 

 individual organism. Just, then, as the individual is mortal, so is 

 the race. Each has its beginning, its period of youth and growth, its 

 maturity, and finally, its decadence, senility and death. So runs the 

 connnon argument. 



]>iology, however, so far from confirming it, declares as the 

 capital fact which contrasts the individual and the race, that whilst 

 the individual is doomed to die from inherent causes, the race is 

 naturally immortal. The tendency of life is not to die, but to live. 

 If individuals die, that is doubtless because more life and fuller is 

 thus attained than if life l)odied itself in immoi'tal forms ; but the 

 germ-plasm is innnortal ; it has no inherent tendency either to 

 degenerate or to die. Species exist and fiourish now which are 

 millions of years older than mankind. ** The individual withers, the 

 race is more and more." The most conspicuously persistent of all 

 races during the last two millenia, the Jews, have survived one 

 empire after another of their oppressors, but have never had an 

 empire of tiieir own. Thus, so far as the historian is concerned, it 

 is not races that die, but civilisiitions and empires. Plato's ^uialogy 

 between the individual and the race is therefore irrelevant, as well 

 as untrue. The fatalistic conception to which it tempts us, saying 

 that races must die, just as iudividuals must, and that therefore it 

 is idle to I'epine or oppose, is utterly unwarrantable, and extremely 

 unhealthy. To take our own case, des])ite the talk a])Out our own 

 racial decadence, our babies still come into the world fit and strong 

 and healthy. AVe kill them in scores of thousands every year, but 

 this infant mortality is not a sign that the race is dying, Imt a sign 

 that even the most splendid living material can be killed or damaged, 

 if you try hard enough. The babies do not die because races are 

 mortal, but because individuals are — and we kill them. The babies 

 drink poison, eat poison, and breathe poison, and in due course die. 

 The theory of racial senihty, inap])licable everywliere because untrue, is 

 most of all inapplicable here. If a race became infertile, Plato and 

 Ai'istotlc would be right. There is no such instance in history apart 

 from well-defined external, not inherent, causes, as in the case of 

 the Tasmanians. Dismissing this analogy, we may also dismiss, as 

 based upon nothing better, the idea that the great tragedies of history 



