64 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



in national policy had its springs deep down in the 

 tendencies of the intellectual life of every leading 

 Western nation. 



There has been nothing in the history of the 

 human mind in the past, there will probably be 

 nothing in the history of the human mind in the 

 future, to compare with the phases of the intellectual 

 movement which in other countries of the West 

 contemporaneously accompanied the phases of the 

 political movement in which the doctrine of the 

 efficient Darwinian animal became embodied in 

 the world policy of modern Germany. 



Almost every reading mind of the West which 

 attempted, under the influence of the Darwinian 

 hypothesis, to apply the doctrine of evolution to 

 human society became affected in the same way. 

 Darwin's science of the animal efficient in his own 

 interest was conceived to be the science of civiliza- 

 tion itself. In every case the conception gave rise 

 to some monstrous form of extravagance. In the 

 military state in Germany where Darwinism from 

 the beginning took a political direction its cul- 

 minating phase was found to be in its application 

 to Weltpolitik. Nietzsche gave Germany the doc- 

 trine of Darwin's efficient animal in the voice of 

 his superman. Bernhardi and the military text- 

 books in due time gave Germany the doctrine of the 



