86 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



thing but omniscience. But we may look upon it in another hght. 

 In the grand average the individuals who engage in warfare are 

 those who are ph3'sically strong, and, as judged by the standards 

 obtaining among their own peoples, they are the patriotic and the 

 noble, and it has usually happened that the flower of the state has 

 been absorbed in its armies. This is less true in modern warfare, but 

 is more true as we go farther backward in the history of mankind. 

 The strong, the brave, and the patriotic have fallen in battle ; the 

 weak, the cowardly, and the selfish have survived ; and thus war- 

 fare has been a constant drain upon the best of all lands; and it 

 may be confidently asserted that human competition by warfare has 

 in this manner failed to be an agency for human progress. Often 

 warfare has been the means of overthrowing unjust and unwise insti- 

 tutions, and in this manner warfare has ofttimes resulted in good in 

 human progress. On the other hand the period of warfare, the 

 time in which peoples are engaged in warfare, is usually a time 

 when the institutions of a people lapse from a higher to a lower 

 condition. The necessities of war ofttimes furnish the excuse and 

 justification for the establishment of institutions, or for modifications 

 unjust and tyrannical in character. In the main war periods are 

 times in which public morals lapse toward barbarism. 



If we turn to consider the effect of private warfare on the progress 

 of mankind we again fail to discover an efficient agency in human 

 culture. He would indeed be a bold man who should assert that it 

 results in the survival of the fittest, and avIio would relegate mur- 

 derers to the class called the best, and the murdered to the class 

 called the worst. 



But mankind engage in another form of competition. They 

 compete for welfare or "happiness ; and in so far as it is true com- 

 petition, as distinguished from honorable rivalry — that is, in so far 

 as one man succeeds at the expense of another — in just so far is in- 

 justice done; for, by the establishment of interdependence among 

 men, the welfare of one properly depends upon the welfare of others, 

 and the essential characteristic of justice, for which all mankind 

 have striven, is this: that no man sliall reap advantage to the in- 

 jury of his neighbor. Competition for welfare, in the sense in 

 which the term is here used, is the prosecution of injustice, and to 

 the extent that justice is established competition is avoided. 



There is yet competition of a third class. Arts compete with 

 arts, and in the average the best are selected, and the choice is 



