UNFOLDING OF MAN’S INTELLIGENCE 
stupid perished, while the strong and intelligent survived 
to transmit their qualities to their descendants. This 
weeding out of the unfit, going on without ceasing for tens 
of thousands of generations, could only have a beneficial 
effect on the quality of the race as a whole. 
Only in very much later times did war become a struggle 
between organized armies whose success depended mainly 
on the possession of means of wholesale destruction. 
Since then it has been the brave, the patriotic, and the 
physically fit who have perished, usually before they have 
had time to found families, while the weak and timid 
have stayed at home to carry on the race. No intelligent 
stock breeder would dream of trying to improve his herd 
in any such way. Yet that is exactly what modern war 
does. As in so many things, here, too, civilization has 
checked and even reversed natural tendencies. 
[ 181 | 
