THE PAGAN ETHIC 91 



becoming the wars of interests carried on through 

 the Government. " Practically all the evils the 

 people are battling with," it continued, " are pro- 

 tected by law and buttressed in government." l 



It was over this raging battlefield of the 

 underworld of the economic life of the West, 

 the underworld where the idealisms of mind 

 are almost without influence, where all the en- 

 franchising influences of thousands of years of 

 civilization struggle against the deep, massive, 

 primordial instincts of human nature, that Mr. 

 Bateson unfurled his new standard. And the 

 affirmation, which in the name of biological science 

 he proposed to inscribe on it, was that the ruling 

 principle of civilization was not altruism but the 

 desire to possess property ; that the conception 

 that all men are equal must be rejected ; that the 

 demand that all men should have equality of 

 opportunity must be finally refused. For they were 

 all " founded in natural falsehood." 



Two years later, before the meeting of the British 

 Association in Australia, Mr. Bateson further de- 

 veloped these views. 1 He saw civilization existing 

 as the result of differentiation transmitted through 



1 Quoted from Naw York World in Continental edition of Daily 

 Mail, 19 Jan. 1913. 



1 Nature, 20 an1 27 August 1914. 



