EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 237 



warfare has ever been a primal cause that has pre- 

 vented stagnation. 



To-day, however, the case is different. Not every 

 man is a soldier, even in times of war ; and the ten- 

 dency now is for warlike spirits to become soldiers 

 and lose their lives, while the quiet, peace-loving men 

 remain at home, thus becoming the fathers of the 

 next generation. Warfare, then, to-day produces 

 results just the reverse of those produced by migrat- 

 ing nations. The nations of modern times are grow- 

 ing more peaceful, more peace-loving — a fact due in 

 part to the elimination of the warlike spirits through 

 the results of war. But selection is still going on, 

 although with the highly developed civilization and 

 the extraordinary growth of our cities the whole con- 

 dition of the problem is changed. To-day the 

 struggle for existence affects man quite differently 

 from what it did in the past, even in the last few 

 centuries. We no longer find the migration of a 

 nation from one land to another, with all its attend- 

 ant struggle and extermination. Migrations, so far 

 as they now occur, are of the most indefinite char- 

 acter, and concern only individuals or families, 

 or perhaps, occasionally, a sect of a few hundred 

 people. The family commonly migrates now into 

 new territories, and when a single family migrates in 

 this way the inexorable law of natural selection does 

 not have the effect it had when great hordes of people 

 migrated together. Migration does not now serve as 

 a factor in eliminating the weak and unambitious. 

 At the same time, even now this same principle occa- 

 sionally comes into evidence. The newer lands of the 

 world, as they have been inhabited by immigrants 

 from the older lands, are, in general, peopled by 



