MILITARISM 537 



fare, he must expect dysgenic consequences. If he presses the 

 biological analogy in protest and justification, he has to be re- 

 minded that there is no biological warrant for supposing that 

 victory must imply a survival of the fittest as judged by our 

 human standard of value. Among the dysgenic consequences 

 to be dreaded we have to think of the possible impoverishment 

 of the race by the loss of large numbers of fine types throughout 

 the whole population year after year (a loss mitigated in various 

 ways, e.g. by the relatively slight elimination among the mothers 

 in the stronger nationalities), of the certain impoverishment of 

 the race by the loss of unique individualities of great promise 

 whom we know not how to replace, and of the great risk of 

 reversionary slipping down the steep ladder of evolution on the 

 part of non-combatants and combatants alike, e.g. by the dis- 

 ruption of integrating idea-systems and by the frequently de- 

 teriorative influences of unexampled stress and strain. 



When we contemplate any national danger we may interpret 

 the facts biologically, as an American zoologist, Professor D. S. 

 Jordan,* has recently done, in terms of the reversed selection 

 which tends to spoil the human harvest; or psychologically, in 

 terms of the changed ideas and ideals of the average man; or 

 sociologically, in terms of variations in the organisation of the 

 societary form ; but, fundamentally, these interpretations must 

 be capable of a unification, and this it is particularly the task 

 of the sociologist to work out . Preoccupation with the biological 

 outlook -the breeder's point of view -will undoubtedly lead 

 to fallacy upon fallacy, to the " materialisms " to which we have 

 already referred ; on the other hand, an ignoring of the biological 

 point of view means a deliberate rejection of the order of facts 

 which we can most precisely measure and test. Moreover, the 

 commonplace is apt to be forgotten, that when changed ideas 

 and ideals find physical embodiment in flesh and blood, they 



* See " The Human Harvest " (American Philosophical Society, 

 April 1906 ; also separately, Boston, 1907, pp. 122). 



