January 26, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



75 



The terms "survival of the fittest" or 

 "struggle for existence" were never more 

 than poor metaphors to express the fact 

 that the chemical compounds required for 

 the growth of organisms are restricted in 

 quantity and that as a consequence un- 

 limited reproduction of organisms is im- 

 possible. Aside from the limitation of food, 

 the physical conditions (e. g., too low or 

 too high a temperature) existing on the 

 different parts of the globe, act as a re- 

 stricting influence. The methods by which 

 the stronger ' ' ' conquer ' ' weaker nations 

 have nothing in common with the fact that 

 salt water fish die when put into fresh 

 water or that microorganisms can not 

 multiply unless they have their proper cul- 

 ture medium. The majority of organisms, 

 e. g., plants, bacteria of the soil, and many 

 others, can in no way be called predatory 

 organisms. Of course, there are animals 

 which are as brutal and predatory as the 

 war enthusiasts think human beings should 

 be — but this is a different thing from call- 

 ing this brutality a universal law of living 

 nature. Fortunately the normal human 

 being does not belong to this brutal type. 



There is a wide quantitative difference 

 in the development of instincts and of the 

 power of inhibition in different human indi- 

 viduals, and these differences may be heredi- 

 tary. Individuals with a strong homicidal 

 mania, who just manage to suppress their 

 paranoic tendencies, will welcome war 

 since it removes for them the burden of 

 constant inhibition, and unfortunately such 

 poorly balanced individuals have rather too 

 frequently been the leaders of govern- 

 ments. No human society can be expected 

 to exist unless the necessity of suppressing 

 or curbing the harmful and pathological 

 instincts of individuals is recognized, and a 

 nation is liable to pay a high price for the 

 privilege of having a semipathological indi- 

 vidual at the head of its government. 



4. The war enthusiasts also derive from 

 what they are pleased to call the "law of 

 nature" the statement that "superior 

 races" have the right of impressing their 

 civilization upon "inferior races." The 

 information concerning the relative value 

 of races is furnished by a group of writers 

 who call themselves "racial biologists." 

 This "racial biology" is based on quota- 

 tions from the erudite statements of theo- 

 logians, philologists, historians, politicians, 

 anthropologists, and also occasionally of 

 biologists, especially of the nonexperiment- 

 ing type. The method of standardizing 

 the different races is consequently neither 

 quantitative nor experimental, for, as the 

 best known "race biologist," Houston 

 Chamberlain, says, "there is something in 

 the world besides compass and yard meas- 

 ure. "Where the learned fails with his arti- 

 ficial construction, one single unbiased 

 glance can illuminate the truth like a sun- 

 beam." A few quotations from Chamber- 

 lain will show how this method of "sun- 

 beams" is applied in special cases. Thus 

 Chamberlain tries to prove that the Celtic 

 Bretons in France are really Germanic. 



These Celtic minds of former centuries, teeming 

 with strength, are not merely free and not merely 

 pious any more than the Breton seamen of to-day, 

 but they are both free and pious and it is this very 

 combination that expresses what is specifically 

 Germanic, as we observe it from Charlemagne to 

 Queen Louise. 



And as a sop to biology, Chamberlain 

 states : 



Let U3 therefore not be in too great a hurry to 

 assert that Germanicism does not lie in blood; it 

 does lie in it; not in the sense that this blood 

 guarantees Germanic sentiment and capacity but 

 that it makes these possible. This limitation is 

 therefore a very clear one: as a rule that man is 

 Germanic who is descended from Germanic an- 

 cestors. 



It will not be necessary at a meeting of 

 biologists to state that Mendelian charac- 

 ters are generally inherited singly and in- 



