266 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



possible to do away with capital punishment, it should be 

 possible to abolish the still far more dreadful capital punish- 

 ment of international war. Now that invention has made 

 war so costly, it is too expensive a luxury for communities 

 to indulge in. We must trust to the survival of the fittest, 

 by the predominance of power and of wisdom over folly, to 

 decide the questions in the future. In the past the necessity 

 for the evolution of energy may possibly have justified the 

 loss of life in days gone by, but the heavy cost of modern 

 warfare makes it such a costly pleasure that no blessings will 

 be sufficient to justify the enormous loss of livelihoods, to say 

 nothing of lives. In the future war will be such a calamity 

 that any sensible nation will appeal in wrath and agony to 

 the central council of nations to prevent and stay such awful 

 sufferings and loss of the past labours of our fathers and our 

 grandfathers as modern warfare is likely to produce if allowed 

 to continue in the future, and we will prefer starvation to war 

 as a means of reducing our population. 



I have now said enough to point out that this Hypothesis 

 of God's Trinity, as a key or check to explain or unlock 

 the hidden meaning of religion and evolutions, is worthy of 

 more and deeper consideration than this little treatise will 

 permit me to provide. Yet it may do much to make mankind 

 the better publicly, if not in private life, to shape the future 

 of good Government, and scientific enlightenment, and indi- 

 vidual self-control. I also hope it will benefit science, reli- 

 gion and mankind, and so improve each as they become better 

 acquainted with the problems it brings into notice. 



