BIOLOGY AND HUMAN TRENDS — PEARL 341 



human beings. In the far-off end all mankind will presumably be a 

 rather uniform lot; all looking, thinking, and acting pretty much the 

 same way, like sheep. National or racial isolation has even now be- 

 come extremely difficult to maintain; indeed in a quite literal sense 

 the attempt to maintain such isolations already threatens group sur- 

 vival in not a few instances. In the long run they cannot and will 

 not be maintained. Just in proportion as they diminish so will the 

 frequency of wars diminish. But the diminution seems likely to be 

 at a fearfully slow rate ; it will be a long time yet before the last war 

 is fought. And a low cynic might suggest that even war, horrid and 

 stupid as it is, would be preferable to that deadly uniformity among 

 men toward which we are slowly but surely breeding our way. 



Society here and abroad is just now experimenting with a whole 

 series of internal readjustments that are being forcibly imposed upon 

 temporarily dazed but always adaptable populations, in the hope 

 that out of them will come a real and permanent solution of the 

 problem that man's urge to reproduction has saddled upon us. All 

 of these experiments appear to fall into a few simple categories when 

 realistically examined. They all stem from and put into practice 

 one or the other of two ideas, neither of which finds unqualified sup- 

 port in the science of biology. The first of these ideas is that it is 

 best to let one individual in a group run the group's affairs ; perma- 

 nently, absolutely and without interference, on the philosophy that 

 averaged opinion and averaged action are as stupid, inefficient, and 

 unreal as an averaged egg is innutritious and unreal. The other and 

 opposite idea is that it is best to have the whole group run the busi- 

 ness as a whole, allowing no individual any powers except as a merely 

 mechanical executor of the group's will, on the philosophy that no 

 individual is really superior to another and that therefore in averaged 

 opinion and action wisdom alone resides. In their practical im- 

 plementation, performance, and effects both ideas turn out to be 

 singularly alike. Both alike scorn the intermediate idea of true 

 democracy. And finally both attempt to solve the problem that is 

 pestering the world by a simple procedure universally regarded as 

 criminal when practiced by an individual. It is that the more abund- 

 ant life is to be assured to a too abundant people by stealing goods 

 from the prudent and efficient, and then giving them to the impru- 

 dent and inefficient. Since there are always a great manj;- more of 

 the latter kind of people than of the former this turns out tempora- 

 rily to be the most effective political device ever heard of. Whether it 

 will prove to be so permanently is less certain. It has been pointed 

 out earlier in this paper that adaptable as man is there are neverthe- 

 less elements of conservative stability in his biological make-up whose 

 roots go back to the very begimiing of his evolution. And in that 



