368 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



biological superiority. And it is in the nature of things that 

 such superior races should hold in bondage those inferior races 

 who have proved themselves incapable, either of forming a polity 

 at all, or of freeing themselves from the primitive polity once 

 created, which acts as an insurmountable obstacle to all subse- 

 quent emancipation. 



Thus, though the need of expansion be inherent in all races, 

 as it is inherent in life, it can be satisfied only by those which 

 have the power to efEect that satisfaction. Under the actual 

 conditions of existence the need of expansion, inherent in the 

 very idea of life, impUes conflict ; and it is through conflict that 

 this fundamental law of life is realised. The races who are 

 capable of the greatest expansion must infaUibly realise that 

 expansion at the expense of others less capable ; and thus, if 

 conflict be responsible for the sufiering of the vanquished, whose 

 need of expansion is necessarily restricted ; it is responsible also 

 for the achievements of the victors, for the triumphs of the 

 human species, apparently so glorious. 



Ill 



When we come to look back over the road which humanity has 

 trodden up till now, we see on all sides the wrecks of former 

 civilisations whose sun has set, and whose glory once filled and 

 overpowered the world. The greatest of ancient civilisations, 

 Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Carthage, Athens, Macedonia, Eome, 

 have gone. Athens, iadeed, has left in its art and in its philo- 

 sophy, an influence which will not die as long as mankind exists ; 

 and our modern Western civiUsation is strongly impregnated by 

 that|;Roman culture, to which we owe our whole political and 

 juridical science. But these vast empires have none the less 

 disappeared in the conflict with other nations. As Mr. Benjamin 

 Kidd says : " It is necessary to keep the mind fixed on a single 

 feature of man's history — namely, the stress and strain under 

 which his development proceeds. His societies, like the indi- 



