GREAT PAGAN RETROGRESSION 47 



which Darwin's theories came to be openly set out in 

 political and military textbooks as the full justifica- 

 tion for war and highly organized schemes of national 

 policy in which the doctrine of Force became the 

 doctrine of Right, and in which force in a manner 

 which had not been known for centuries was openly 

 made the basis of all legal authority. 



As the prestige of Darwinism increased and as the 

 new ideas became entrenched in the handbooks of 

 popular science and in systems of revolutionary 

 criticism, it was almost as if the desert and the jungle 

 had begun to voice themselves in human thought. 

 The world beheld the champions of force gradu- 

 ally becoming again in their own right the Super- 

 men of systems of popular philosophy. In solemn 

 treatises of social science it saw them emerging as 

 " efficients." In political science lectures they be- 

 gan to appear as " we who have the Right because 

 we have the Power " of systems of national policy. 

 The doctrine of the supremacy and the omnipotence 

 of force became the doctrine of absolute Right 

 expounded as the law of " biological necessity " in 

 books of state-craft and war-craft, of expanding 

 military empires. And through it all the world 

 saw the " right of conquest " becoming justified 

 and glorified by warlike and military organizations 

 as civilization had never dared to glorify and justify 



