BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1311 



BIOLOGY AND WAR.— When a mason builds a wall he continually 

 tests his work with a plumb-line, a level, and a square. He applies 

 three different tests to make sure that he is building well — that is, 

 right in all three dimensions. Similarly in more complex social affairs, 

 where the issue is not clear, it is useful to apply several tests. When 

 they confirm one another, they strengthen our resolution ; when they 

 are discrepant, they show as that there is need for further inquiry. 



Three such tests, for our life and its doings, are to be found in the 

 ideas of the Conservation of Energy, the Conservation of Life, and 

 the Conservation of Moral Values — physical, biological, and ethical 

 respectively. The first test condemns an undertaking that is waste- 

 ful, or that attempts to get more work done than the available 

 energy allows; and the useful criticism that a business man expresses 

 when he calls a scheme unsound is often based on his discovery that 

 physical principles are being ignored. The biological test asks 

 whether the activities in question are consistent with the health of 

 the individual and with the welfare of the race. The third test asks 

 if the line of action makes for the conservation of what we hold to 

 be most precious and most beneficent in our social heritage — the 

 traditions of civilised behaviour, the standard of conduct, and the 

 ideal of good will among men. 



War Brought to the Test. — In the history of nations it has at 

 times appeared that war was inevitable except at a sacrifice of 

 honour, justice, and liberty. Yet this does not affect the fact that 

 to have tens of thousands of wholesome men in the prime of life 

 mowed down with machine-guns is an extreme of wastage without 

 parallel in history, even in famine or plague. By the first two tests, 

 the physical and the organic, war is condemned. 



When we turn to the social or ethical test, we find the issues far 

 more intricate. It has to be remembered (i) that besides what may 

 be inevitable defence, even by the first two tests as well as the third, 

 there may be nobility in the determination to go to war if there is 

 no alternative course consistent with honour, justice, and freedom; 

 (2) that the waging of the war may afford opportunities for courage, 

 endurance, magnanimity, and other virtues; and (3) that a war which 

 can be carried through with a good conscience may leave a nation 

 spiritually enriched. As William James said in his famous essa}^ on 

 The Moral Equivalent of War: "Those ancestors, those efforts, 

 those memories and legends; are the most ideal part of what we now 

 own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the 

 blood poured out." That is the one side of it. On the other side, 

 war is so awful that, as Prof. James went on to say: "Only when 

 forced upon one, only when an enem3^'s injustice leaves us no alterna- 

 tive, is a war now thought permissible.'' The fact is that while the 

 willingness to face war in a good cause is noble, and while waging 

 war may engender valour and arouse or freshen idealism, the actual 



