VIII 



A FALLACY MADE IN GERMANY 



DURING the Great War the question was 

 asked, "Do the inexorable laws of evolution 

 apply to human beings as they apply to the lower 

 animals and to plants?" Most assuredly they do, 

 but with a difference. Man is as certainly one of the 

 results of the evolutionary process as is the horse or 

 the dog, the tree or the plant. We are as certain of 

 his animal origin as we can well be of anything in 

 the biological history of the globe. But the inference 

 which has so often been drawn from this fact — 

 namely, that man's development involves the same 

 factors, and is along parallel lines — is a fallacy. 

 That the supremacy of might, which has ruled, and 

 still rules in nature below man, justifies the rule of 

 might in human communities in our day, is an in- 

 vention of perverted human ambition. 



As Nature rules by the law of might, and as man 

 is a part of Nature, why is he not under the same 

 rule? The answer is that man is an exceptional crea- 

 ture; that while he is a part of the animal kingdom, 

 he is a new kind of animal; and while he is the out- 

 come of evolution, like the rest, new factors which 

 are not operative in the orders below him have 

 played a leading part in his later development. 



134 



