536 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL RESULTS 



may be that there are analogous phenomena awaiting discovery 

 in the case of man. 



Our general position is that among civilised men the sentiments 

 of solidarity and sympathy are too precious and too strong to 

 admit of much social surgery, or of the more thoroughgoing 

 methods of reproductive elimination, which moreover assume 

 the possession of more science than is really available. On the 

 other hand, there seems much to be said for restricting the repro- 

 duction of undesirables who fall back on the State for support, 

 for some sort of marriage-tests, for developing a social prejudice 

 against reproduction among the victims of markedly bad in- 

 heritance, for a fuller and deeper recognition of woman's rights 

 both as to mating and maternity, for eugenic devices such as 

 Mr. Galton has suggested, and so on. But there is one other 

 suggestion we wish to try to express. 



Militarism. In his luminous book, "Evolution and the War," 

 Dr. Chalmers Mitchell has shown the fallaciousness of comparing 

 modern warfare with anything that goes on in nature. Thus, 

 " Modern nations are not units of the same order as the units 

 of the animal and vegetable kingdom." . . . "The struggle for 

 existence as propounded by Charles Darwin, and as it can be 

 followed in nature, has no resemblance with human warfare." 



If a comparison between human warfare and " the struggle 

 for existence in nature " be insisted on, it will have to be ad- 

 mitted that biologically regarded even a righteous war is a re- 

 version to the crudest mode of struggle, a recourse in great part 

 to the physical force test an attempt to transcend which surely 

 marks the transition from barbarism to civilisation. It is 

 agreed, of course, that, socially regarded, a righteous war may 

 be a discipline in nobility. 



Man is not shut up to imitate this or that particular mode 

 of the struggle for existence whch he sees in nature, which 

 indeed includes co-operative integration as well as internecine 

 conflict. If he indulges in or is forced to modern human war- 



