

THE WORLD REVOLUTION 5 



countless ages before history has view of him, the 

 fighting male of the West has streamed across 

 Europe in successive waves of advance and con- 

 quest, vanquishing, exterminating, overwhelming, 

 overmastering, taking possession. The fittest, who 

 have survived in these successive layers of conquest, 

 have been the fittest in virtue of the right of force, 

 and in virtue of a process of military selection 

 probably the longest, the sternest, the most cul- 

 minating which the race has ever undergone. 



It is this fighting pagan of the world who has 

 made the history of the West. The civilization 

 which he has produced is the strangest flower in the 

 fields of time. He has introduced into it at every 

 point the spirit of the unmeasured ages of conquest 

 out of which it has come. Into all the institutions 

 which he has created he has carried the spirit of 

 war, and the belief in force as the ultimate principle 

 of the world. 



But at the same time he has inherited a religion 

 which is the utter negation of force, and which in 

 every phase of his development has remained the 

 outstanding challenge to his conception of the 

 omnipotence of force. He has struggled with 

 this extraordinary inheritance for centuries in 

 history. Deep in the inmost recesses of his nature 

 he has continually persuaded himself against belief 



