44 Causes of its Success 



as a Great Power. They were deprived of this 

 profound joy and saw themselves condemned to 

 modesty. All this gave an extraordinary prestige 

 to force and favoured the popularity of the Dar- 

 winian doctrine. The Italians had inaugurated 

 a new era in the history of the world — the forma- 

 tion of a great State, not by massacre on the field 

 of battle, but by the unanimous plebiscite of her 

 citizens. They had the supreme glory of being 

 the first nation founded upon law. Yet they at- 

 tributed to this fact a mediocre importance. They 

 would have greatly preferred a victory gained 

 through bloodshed and wholesale slaughter, to 

 the most wonderful victory gained in the domain 

 of ideas, and all these exaltations of brute force 

 aided in the triumph of the distorted Darwinian 

 doctrine. 



The other nations of Europe were also influenced 

 by the current of ideas which had established 

 themselves in Germany, France, and Italy. Eng- 

 land, the cradle of true Darwinism, was naturally 

 very sympathetic toward this distorted "social 

 Darwinism" which was reflected from the conti- 

 nent especially because she had an immense 

 colonial empire founded upon force and in parts 

 still sustained by force. 



From Europe the philosophy of force spread to 

 the rest of the world. The South American coun- 

 tries received the doctrine from France and Italy. 

 The Imperialists of America imported their ideas 

 from the Imperialists of England. The strong 



