io WAR & STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



conduct of man, he put in the category of the practi- 

 cal reason and regarded as being under the dictate 

 of some authority that had no relation to experience. 

 For the moment I am not concerned with the exact 

 point at which Kant drew the line between theo- 

 retical and practical reason, or still less with accept- 

 ance or rejection of the Kantian sanction for morality. 

 But I am concerned to remind you that one of the 

 greatest of the philosophers, one who set out on his 

 examination of human reason from the side of 

 physical science, in the first place regarded all science 

 as theoretical, and in the second place looked to a 

 source other than science for the rules of conduct. 

 It is grim irony, that would have pleased Heine, 

 to find General von Bernhardi on the one hand pro- 

 claiming Kant as the chief glory of German idealism, 

 and on the other not only treating a scientific law 

 as part of the world of reality, but by applying it 

 to a question of moral conduct, confusing between 

 the theoretical and the practical reason, and so com- 

 mitting the crimen non inter Kantianos nominandum. 

 I am anticipating ; my argument has gone no 

 further than to assert that a scientific law, being 

 only a synthesis in the human mind of certain por- 

 tions of what we call the extended world, has no 

 necessary validity beyond these portions. When 

 I have examined more closely the claim of the struggle 

 for existence to be termed a scientific law, it will be 

 time to enquire if the affairs of animals and plants, 

 of which the struggle for existence is an alleged 

 synthesis, are of the same order as those affairs of 

 men and nations to which the Germans have 

 applied it. 



