CHAPTER IX 
THE SELECTIVE INFLUENCE OF WAR 
“Though, during barbarism and the earlier stages of civilization, 
war has the effect of exterminating the weaker societies, and of weed- 
ing out the weaker members of the stronger societies, and thus in both 
ways furthering the development of those valuable powers, bodily 
and mental, which war brings into play; yet during the later stages of 
civilization, the second of these actions is reversed... . But when 
the industrial development has become such that only some of the 
adult males are drafted into the army, the tendency is to pick out and 
expose to slaughter the best-grown and healthiest; leaving behind the 
physically-inferior to propagate the race.”—Herbert Spencer, The 
Study of Sociology. 
Tue subject of the present chapter really belongs under the 
heading of the preceding one. Of the many forms of selective 
elimination which are at work in human society, war is one of the 
most conspicuous. It involves a struggle for existence in the 
most literal sense of that term, but whether in general it even- 
tuates in the survival of the fittest depends upon many circum- 
stances which are often difficult to estimate. Although many 
have written about it as if it consisted merely in the struggle of 
rival contestants of which the strongest or most skillful worsted 
his adversary, the biological effect of war is no simple problem. 
“Tf it were not for war,’ says General Bernhardi, ‘“‘we should 
find that inferior and degenerated races would overcome healthy 
and youthful ones by their wealth and their numbers. The 
generative importance of war lies in this, that it causes selection, 
and thus war becomes a biological necessity. It becomes an indis- 
pensable regulator, because without war there could never be 
racial nor cultural progress.” 
The same position has been developed by many writers, some of 
them militarists, and others who have been led to this view-point 
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