INTRODUCTION ix 



lution? Can science, religion, and philosophy ever 

 come to any basic agreement on these very practical 

 questions? 



To many practical souls, the philosophy of peace 

 is but an idle dream, an enticing but unattainable 

 vision. They truly say: "We have no such dreams. 

 The brothers we know have no such visions. They 

 only are wise who deal in realities, who see mankind, 

 and the world of things at large, as they are. Nature 

 and her ways, man and his ways are different; they are 

 what they are, and cannot be changed." With all that 

 we have no quarrel. But are we quite sure of our real- 

 ities? Do we surely know how nature grows and how 

 man grows? How both create and preserve their 

 products? Does man, consciously or otherwise, imi- 

 tate nature in his constructive ways; or are his methods 

 peculiar to himself? 



Surely it behooves us to inspect our dreams and our 

 visions more carefully. It is doubtless true that there 

 are both peaceful and warlike ways in nature, as in man. 

 But which ones are the more creative? What kind of 

 things are more likely to be saved? What kind of 

 things are more likely to be destroyed? How do those 

 things exist, which do exist? 



If our inspection is well and duly made, we may 

 perhaps be able to answer these questions with a greater 

 degree of accuracy; possibly to define "righteousness," 

 at least from the standpoint of evolution; to formulate 

 a basic, creative law, and to define, in terms of progress, 

 the purpose of a peaceful life. 



