144 The Special Sociological Errors 



of hygiene and the sanitary methods of modem 

 civilization, have greatly decreased the death- 

 rate in India and made possible the survival of a 

 much larger and increasing population. So if the 

 people of India are inferior (as is demonstrated, 

 according to the advocates of the philosophy of 

 force, by the fact that they were defeated in the 

 struggle with the white race), the result of this 

 struggle has been greatly to increase the survival 

 power of the so-called "inferior race" which 

 "went down" in the physical struggle. 



In the same way the introduction of modern 

 hygiene and sanitary methods in Africa and in the 

 tropics is giving other so-called "inferior races" an 

 added chance to survive. The slow and invisible 

 causes are so much more important than the cata- 

 clysmic, that they completely reverse the action 

 of the latter, and produce precisely the opposite 

 result from that which, in the philosophy of force, 

 is assumed to be the outcome of the race struggle. 



Renan expresses the same idea as Professor 

 Pearson, in another form: 



The struggle against nature does not suffice. By 

 means of industry man succeeds in reducing it to 

 an unimportant matter. Then comes the struggle 

 of races. ^ 



Renan falls a victim to the first of the biological 

 errors of the philosophy of force in thus practically 

 ignoring the existence of the universe. "The 



' La reforme intellectuelle et morale, p. iii. 



