A SHEAF OF NATURE NOTES 



had given currency to these ideas. He had 

 denied that there was any inherent tendency to 

 development, afiBrming that we Hved in a world of 

 chance, and that power comes only to him who ex- 

 erts power — half truths, all of them. 



The Germans as a people have never been born 

 again into the light of our higher civilization. 

 They are morally blind and politically treacherous. 

 Their biological condition is that of the lower 

 orders, and the Darwinian law of progress came 

 to them as an inspiration. Darwin's mind, in its 

 absence of the higher vision, was akin to a German 

 mind. In his plodding patience, his devotion to de- 

 tails, and in many other ways, his mind was Ger- 

 man. But in his candor, his truthfulness, his humil- 

 ity, his simplicity, he was anything but German. 

 Undoubtedly his teachings bore fruit of a political 

 and semi-political character in the Teutonic mind. 

 The Teutons incorporated the law of the jungle 

 in their ethical code. Had not they the same 

 right to expansion and to the usurpation of the 

 territory and to the treasures of their neighbors 

 that every weed in the fields and even the vermin 

 of the soil and the air have? If they had the 

 sanction of natural law, that was enough; they 

 were quite oblivious to the fact that with man's 

 moral nature had come in a new biological law 

 which Darwin was not called upon to reckon with, 

 but which has tremendous authority and survival 



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