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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
that it has been accepted, if not even approved, by the leaders of thought 
in all departments of science and philosophy. At the outset it was strenu- 
ously opposed, not only by theologians, but by men eminent in natural 
science, such as Goodsir and Cuvier. But all these early controversies 
have now been relegated to the lumber-room of forgetfulness, without, 
apparently, leaving any bad effects on religion or ethics. The special code 
of moral and social laws, which became necessary for the guidance and 
protection of increasing generations, has not hitherto been grossly violated 
by any of our supposed civilised nations until the outbreak of the present 
European war, which has disclosed such a recrudescence of barbarous 
methods on the part of the Germans. That this relapse into primitive 
barbarism is partly founded on the facts of organic evolution is evident 
from the works of several German authors, notably those of Treitschke, 
Nietzsche, and Von Bernhardi. Three of the leading dogmas of the 
new German Kultur may be traced to that source, viz. (1) the little 
regard paid to the sacredness of human life ; (2) that war, like natural 
selection, improves the efficiency of a nation’s manhood ; (3) that social 
inactivity, as disclosed by parasitic life, leads to the decay of races and 
nations. 
Before, however, further discussing the causes which produced this 
retrograde phase of ethical culture among the German people, I wish to 
draw attention to remarks I made in the Friday evening lecture at the 
British Association held at Southport in 1903, on the earliest phase of 
human civilisation known to us, viz. that of the Palaeolithic races of 
Europe as a contrast to that of the civilised world of to-day. My chief 
object in reproducing the following extract, being the concluding remarks 
of that lecture, is to emphasise the gloomy view I then took of the suicidal 
tendencies of the later discoveries and innovations into military and social 
life. It is somewhat remarkable that I should have then correlated the 
failure of food with the break-up of modern civilisation, as cause and effect, 
and that to-day scarcity of food is the most probable element which will 
decide the fate of the moral world now in a death struggle with destructive 
barbarism : — 
“ Were it possible for one of our Palaeolithic ancestors to sit in judgment 
on the comparative merits of the two civilisations, his verdict would 
probably be something like this : — You have utilised the forces of nature 
to a marvellous extent, and thereby secured the means of greatly increasing 
the number of your fellow-creatures; but, at the same time, you have 
multiplied the sources of disease and misery. The invention of money has 
facilitated the accumulation and transmission of riches among the few ; but 
