SOME ASPECTS OF ZOOLOGY 27 



outburst of derision, abstract biological doctrines had very 

 little weight. 



But in Germany, where learning is pressed into the service 

 of the Government, and where a section of the Professoriate 

 (but I am glad to say by no means all) trim their sails to 

 catch a favouring bureaucratic breeze, the doctrine of the 

 Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest has been 

 claimed as a sanction not only for unlimited commercial 

 competition, but for military aggression ; for ruthlessness in 

 every form ; for world domination ; in short, for all that we 

 are now fighting against. The possibility of this application 

 of the Darwinian theory to human afiairs was not unrecog- 

 nised in this country. It formed the subject of many essays 

 some twenty-five or thirty years ago, and was, no doubt, 

 responsible for much of the aversion to Darwin's teaching, 

 and for its slow acceptance even among the educated classes 

 in Great Britain. But this aspect of zoological theory became 

 a cult among the ultra-patriotic Germans. The writings of 

 Strauss, now more than forty years old, are probably forgotten, 

 but the more recent works of Bernhardi and other authors, 

 scarcely known in England before 1914, are sufficient to assure 

 us that for a long time the German people has been taught 

 that war is a holy thing because natural, that it is a necessary 

 consequence of " the great biological law," and that nothing 

 but failure and contempt are reserved for those who would in- 

 augurate a reign of peace or suggest any other social order 

 than that of unrestricted competition. 



" Destroy thy neighbour, that thy days may be long in the 

 land which the struggle for existence giveth thee." That would 

 seem to be the creed founded on what I hold to be a mis- 

 representation or at least a misapplication of the evolutionary 

 theory. 



Partly because of the humble and pacific part that it has 

 played in the past three-and-a-half years, partly because of 

 this bellicose application of one of its doctrines, it is to be 

 feared that zoology will start with a handicap in the recon- 

 struction that is to follow after the war. 



A large part of this reconstruction is to be educational. 



