SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 393 



In an Editorial (Science Progress, Jan., 1915), Sir Ronald 

 Ross has the following pathetic reflection anent the present 

 war: "In this antithesis the mass of humanity must 

 face the alternative accusations that it possesses either 

 the heart of the tiger or the brain of the fool." 

 Would-be pacifists will do well to remember that in 

 so far as large masses of mankind are still animated 

 by the tiger's instincts, in so far as we are still 

 breeding men " with too much guano in their composition " 

 ("vulgar fractions" in Ruskin's phraseology) and therefore 

 apt to be of a tyrannical disposition and brutalizing others; 

 we must expect a frequent recurrence of the Huxleyan 

 " Struggle for Existence," with occasional recourse to the 

 "terrible medicine" of war. 



Regenerative efforts should be directed towards the 

 physiological as well as the political emancipation of mankind. 

 Indeed, to fail in this respect means " a lazy compliance with 

 low conditions," and constitutes our chief sin of omission, as 

 has been well perceived by Shelley, Tolstoy, Ruskin and 

 others. Ruskin, speaking on aesthetic, ethical and economic 

 grounds, warns us that: 



No longer among the individuals of the race is there equality or 

 likeness, a distributed fairness and fixed type visible in each; but evil 

 diversity, and terrible stamp of various degradation ; features seamed 

 by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by 

 poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse ; bodies consumed 

 with sloth, broken down by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured in 

 foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly 

 and devilish ; cur bones full of the sin of our youth, the heaven reveal- 

 ing our iniquity, the earth rising up against us, the roote dried up 

 beneath, and the branch cut off above ; well for us only, if, after behold- 

 ing this our natural face in a glass, we desire not straightaway to 

 forget what manner of men we be. 



What are we to expect from such a humanity? Ruskin, 

 though he has somewhat overdrawn the picture, is yet quite 

 different from writers of the class of Nietzsche, in that he 

 preserves a loving regard for " simple humanity " and 

 sympathy with the "lower creatures." He recommends the 



