16 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



the unexpected event which finally brought disaster. A third 

 believes that a more important influence was the wind of Pan- 

 Slavism which blew gently for many decades, and then came up 

 as a sudden gust when Russia supported Serbia. 



Each of these students is right. If any one of a thousand 

 conditions had been different, the war would never have happened 

 in the way that the world now rues so keenly. Yet probably it 

 would have happened in some other way. The course of evolution 

 has brought the human race to a certain stage of development. 

 In that stage selfishness, short-sightedness, lust, and jealousy still 

 dominate a large part of mankind. Vast numbers of people are 

 intellectually so weak or sluggish that they can easily be domi- 

 nated by stronger wills, no matter whether those wills are right 

 or wrong. Therefore strong nations are able to exploit their 

 weaker neighbors; a ruling class is able to persuade their fellow 

 countrymen that world-power is the only alternative to downfall; 

 and a group of selfish politicians is able to hoodwink this so-called 

 land of freedom and wallow in graft to the neck. When the world 

 is in such a stage, war, graft, labor troubles, and a host of other 

 ills are inevitable. We think that we have found palliatives and 

 even cures, but the old ills keep breaking out in new places. 

 Something is radically wrong with the human race, and we must 

 find out how to right it. 



The teachers of religion were the first to announce a cure for 

 the fundamental ill from which all other troubles take their rise. 

 "Ye must be born anew." That was the message of religion. But 

 three thousand years of Judaism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, 

 and Christianity have not brought that new birth except to scat- 

 tered individuals here and there. Why? Because the message 

 was wrong? No, but because the teachers of religion have insisted 

 that a spiritual birth was sufficient. Seeing this error the edu- 

 cators took up the cry. "Ye must be born anew," they shouted, 

 "but your minds as well as your souls must be reborn." So 

 education became the panacea — education of rich and poor, 



