64 The Biological Errors 



William James comes to the same conclusion 

 and finds a moral equivalent for war and a remedy 

 for existing injustice in the idea of compulsory 

 industrial service. Instead of military conscrip- 

 tion, he advocates a conscription of the whole 

 youthful population to form for a certain number 

 of years a part of the army enUsted against Nature. ^ 



The second error of the philosophy of force 

 is that in which struggle is confused with the 

 extermination of fellow-creatures. A typical ex- 

 ample of this confusion may be quoted from 

 Spencer^ who maintains that without the collec- 

 tive homicides of the past ten thousand years 

 the world would still be inhabited only by cavemen 

 of a feeble type: 



... to the unceasing warfare between species is 

 mainly due both growth and organization. Without 

 universal conflict there would have been no develop- 

 ment of the active powers. . . . Among predatory ani- 

 mals death by starvation, and among animals preyed 

 upon death by destruction, has carried off the least- 

 fa vourably modified individuals and varieties. Every 

 advance in strength, speed, agility, or sagacity, in 

 creatures of the one class, has necessitated a cor- 

 responding advance in creatures of the other class; 

 and without the never-ending efforts to catch and to 

 escape, with loss of life as the penalty of failure, the 

 progress of neither could have been achieved. , . . 



^ The Moral Equivalent of War, p. 17. 



' Principles of Sociology, 2d edition, vol. ii., p. 240. 



