552 HUMAN PROGRESS 



prepared to maintain the argument in this extreme form. 

 It appears to be sound logic to recognize the existence 

 of the strife impulse, and to seek means whereby it 

 may find expression without harming mankind. 



Sports. — A suggestion often made, and one that cer- 

 tainly has much to recommend it, is that in organized 

 competitive sports the impulse to combat may be satis- 

 fied, to the benefit rather than to the harm of humanity. 

 The great and apparently increasing vogue of competitive 

 sports offers the possibility that man may through this 

 channel achieve, at least in part, such satisfaction of the 

 strife impulse as he desires, without such hindrance to his 

 progress as the destructive competition of war inevitably 

 entails. 



Commercial Success. — Without doubt much of the 

 lure of business life lies in the opportunity it affords for 

 obtaining the thrill of strife. To compete successfully 

 in the world of commerce; to pit one's abilities against 

 the abilities of other men and come off victorious; to 

 wield the power that attends success; for a large fraction 

 of civilized humanity these count among the supreme 

 rewards life has to offer. While to the abstract thinker 

 such ideals may seem to fall short of the best of which 

 mankind is capable, the fact cannot be denied that com- 

 mercial strife includes, with its undoubted evils, much 

 of good; while the strife of war, perhaps not wholly evil 

 in past times, has for modern civilization no redeeming 

 feature. To substitute industrial competition for warfare 

 means, then, to make an advance. One may reasonably 

 look forward t^ a time when an adequate substitute for 

 roninierrial strife will be found, when a further advance 

 will be achieved. Of the nature of this substitute there 

 is only this to say — that it must be founded upon the 

 nature of man as a biological entity, and not upon any 

 philosophical speculations upon what man might attain 

 were ho different than he is. 



Future Progress. — So far as we are able to perceive, 



