SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 397 



extremes, from one-sidedness and from mis-applications. 

 Man's place in the universe had long been determined before 

 the pseudo-discoveries anent " Natural Selection " seemed to 

 claim radically changed interpretations. There were the 

 Scriptures and the ancient sages, expressing the "sublimed" 

 and "matured" phylogenetic experience of the human race; 

 there was Seneca declaring that " ubicumque homo est, ibi 

 beneficii locus est," and Goethe: " Edel sei der Mensch, 

 hulfreich und gut." There is nothing in modern Science 

 really to invalidate such ancient wisdom. 



How well some of the modern French school of 

 sociologists have perceived the symptoms of danger and 

 estimated the actual and prospective damage due to " Natural 

 Selectionism," will be evident from the following passages 

 from Bougie's work (1909) : 



Les vivants sont condamnes a une lutte sans relache et sans merci. 

 Vainement les hommes essaieraient-ils d'eluder cette necessite naturelle. 

 Toute la philosophic du monde vient s'y brlser. Si 1'on ne veut pas 

 etre mange, il faut bien manger les autres. Les aphorismes de cette 

 marque sont monnaie courante, dans les discussions contemporaines. 

 Suivant M. Fouillee, la philosophic qu'ils representent celle des loups 

 et des grands carnassiers serait precistment V 'inspiratrice des efforts 

 diriges contre la culture classique humaniste et liberate. " Armez-vous 

 pour les luttes de la vie," voila ce qu'on repeterait aujourd'hui aux 

 jeunes gens. Et on leur apprendrait a mepriser tous les enseignements 

 qui ne leur assurent pas, en vue de ces luttes, un avantage personnel, 

 toutes les idees qui ne sont pas des armes. 



The seeds of such " Zucht-wahl " doctrines have 

 unfortunately found a congenial soil in Continental countries 

 susceptible to theories of this kind, and the harvest is now 

 (September, 1914) in course of being reaped. One day I trust 

 the civilised world will understand that the evolutionary 

 process is calculated to develop nothing to a greater degree 

 than ethics. Purified by its sufferings, the world will realise 

 the falsity of many pseudo-discoveries, and it will listen again 

 eagerly to the new and more gladsome tidings of an evolution 

 theory, brought up to date in ethics, which as I hope I have 

 shown begins in a sense in the sub-human world, wherever the 



