Anthropological Romances 155 



works of social reform and hygiene must be post- 

 poned, and the finest flower of civilization must be 

 prevented from blossoming in each nation because 

 the international reign of terror cuts off the 

 economic strength of the nations at the roots. 

 With more abundant resources, the race could be 

 better nourished, better educated, higher in all 

 respects in the biological scale. As soon as we 

 examine the actual facts, we see how superficial 

 are the views represented in the quotations from 

 Renan and Schallmayer. And as sociology becomes 

 more truly a science, it will become more and more 

 necessary to take account of these invisible facts of 

 the daily life about us, and to abandon the obsolete 

 doctrines of the catastrophic aberration. 



We see, then, that the forces of social progress 

 are tremendously complex. To assign all this 

 progress to a single battle, or even to a series of 

 battles, means that we must voluntarily close our 

 eyes to the most common phenomena of social 

 life; it means that we must place oiu-selves on 

 metaphysical heights, so far removed from the 

 world of actualities that it is no longer possible to 

 discern fact and reality. To attribute all progress 

 to one factor, war, and to neglect all others, is to 

 fall into a more colossal aberration than has been 

 the misfortune of scientists in any other depart- 

 ment of human knowledge. 



Somewhat related to the cataclysmic theory of 

 social progress, is a group of errors which have 



