1366 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



fundamental for organic and psychic evolution. Witness that of 

 ants and bees from lower insects; and, beyond all, that of birds and 

 mammals from reptiles — in each case through mothering and 

 parental care, in nest and bosom. 



Here be it noted that Darwin's doctrine of "The Origin of 

 Species by the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for 

 Life", as his title-page has it, was perfectly clear as to the above 

 main view of evolution. Yet through those two past generations of 

 the industrial age, from Tennyson's presentment of "Nature, red 

 in tooth and claw", to Nietzsche's rhapsodies of contempt for the 

 more gentle and truly evolutionary virtues which his sickness and 

 "Weltschmerz" made him caricature as mere weakness, the public 

 have mainly had such mis-popularisations of the evolution process; 

 thus coloured, of course, by the contemporary growth of mechanistic 

 struggles in peace and war, by turns and together, and in fact per- 

 vading the whole atmosphere of the Industrial Age. But now, with 

 our evolutionary outlook, clarified by advancing science, and by 

 experience of War and After-War as well, we are certain and assured, 

 alike on biological and in social levels, of the superior survival- 

 value of the Culture of Existence — as notably by the smaller peoples 

 outside the war, as compared with the struggles to the death of the 

 Great Powers that were in it; in fact, just as we are sure of the 

 present survival of birds and mammals, for all their smallness and 

 weakness, compared with past reptiles, with all their size and 

 strength. Why, it was the Reptilia that, so lately as Cretaceous 

 times, were the Great Powers! They had the colossal size and 

 strength; they marched resistless, like tanks, and even bigger; and 

 they often were armour-plated as well. They were masters of sea- 

 power, as well as land. Some of them actually were aeroplanes, so 

 could fly yet more amazingly than we do. And as for tooth and claw, 

 they hold the organic record: so how could they give a thought to 

 the then smallest of powers, our tiny rat-sized great-grandmothers, 

 who could but dive into their holes when the great feet tramped 

 near, or the great heavy tail, carelessly dragging, coarsely crushed 

 them there. But where are the Reptiles now ? Fossils in their slime, 

 hardened to rock; or in our museums at best. Yet alas, also re-in- 

 carnated, as the Hindu and the theosophist would say, in their 

 modern successors, the yet more colossal mechanistic and mam- 

 monistic, megapolitan and megalomanian — and thus inevitably 

 militaristic — "Great Powers" of our day. Far as yet from extinc- 

 tion, they think; yet nearer that than they see. For why did their 

 reptilian prototypes die out, despite their magnitude? We so far 

 know now; for we see that though their bodies grew too big, their 

 brains remained too small ; and that was the end of them. 



Yet, after all, we mammals, and the birds too, are of reptiUan 



