instincts. It is the disposition which makes a man exercise his will, and persevere when the goal is not in sight. Action is thus a better gauge of the hope of immortality than profession. Perhaps we should do well if, instead of saying that we hope for immortality, we were to say that we disbelieve in death.

What the New Testament calls eternal life is life in which a man overcomes death by looking beyond it. He takes his stand among the eternal things, and thus commits himself to aims and enterprises which exceed the short term of his earthly existence. The immortality in which he believes is his already. He gives the most conclusive evidence that he holds it as an inalienable possession. The brave men who have found their graves by the Belgian canals or in the French valleys might have given us surprising answers, had we questioned them upon their beliefs in a future life. They have, however, offered a more convincing evidence of their faith in immortality than any verbal profession they could have made. They held their lives to be of little price when weighed against a nation's fidelity to its engagements. The human soul thus obeying its best instincts, and surrendering its all without thought of personal recompense, makes a claim upon God which we may trust Him not to repudiate.

Symbols will change and fashions of thought wax old, as doth a garment, to the very end; but the hope of life beyond death will always remain an inseparable fibre in the texture of the human soul. It may be most strong when it is least able to express itself. It is often inarticulate or voiceless. But its fruits are unmistakeable. It raises men into an eternal world even while they remain among things temporal. It is their response to the Divine claim upon their unreserved and perpetual allegiance.

J. GAMBLE.

Art. 2.-THE WAR AND THE RACE.

1. Les Selections Sociales. By G. Vacher de Lapouge. Paris Fontemoing, 1896.

2. Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen Grundlagen. By Otto Ammon. Ed. 2. Jena: Fischer, 1896. 3. The Races of Europe. By William Z. Ripley. Kegan Paul, 1900.

4. Eugenics and Militarism. By Prof. V. Kellogg: Problems in Eugenics, p. 220 et seq. Eugenics Education Society, 1912.

5. War and the Breed. By D. Starr Jordan. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1915.

6. The Main Illusions of Pacificism. By G. G. Coulton. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1916.

7. On the Statistical Enquiries needed after the War in connection with Eugenics. By Major Leonard Darwin. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March 1916. 8. The Declining Birth-Rate. Report of the National Birth-Rate Commission. Chapman and Hall, 1916. 9. How to Pay for the War. (Fabian Research Department.) Edited by Sidney Webb. Allen and Unwin, 1916.

SINCE the general acceptance of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the effect of war on the racial qualities of mankind has been the subject of frequent discussion. Unfortunately definite evidence of its racial effects is difficult to obtain, and little has been done to attack the problem by scientific methods. Hence, for the most part, each writer has emphasised those obvious considerations which tell in favour of his own predispositions. The militarist has enlarged on the elimination of the unfit individual or nation, and the pacifist on the destruction of the best by battle or barrack life, each in the happy confidence of finding plentiful facts to warrant either a policy of ruthless conquest and destruction, or of complacent and mean-spirited surrender of national ideals or obligations.

For the first time since Darwin's work, his conceptions and phraseology, have been absorbed into the heritage of thought of the chief nations of the world, we have raging in our midst a war in which almost the whole Vol. 227.-No. 450.

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manhood of Europe is involved-a conflict between nation and nation and between man and man, which seems comparable to the incessant and universal struggle going on between species and individuals in the realms of animal and plant life.

How far, we may ask ourselves, does war, especially such a war as this, produce effects on the races of mankind similar to those contemplated by Darwin in the 'Origin of Species'? Does it favour the survival of one set of qualities at the expense of another, and if so, what qualities are of survival value and what tend to be eliminated? Does the survival of the fittest mean more than the fittest for the particular environment? Can we correlate qualities of survival value in individuals or nations under the ordeal of war, with qualities of worth on the physical, mental or moral plane? Will war, to put it shortly, benefit or injure the innate bodily, intellectual or spiritual character of our nation or mankind?

In natural conditions, all life exists in a continual struggle against similar or different types, and against the rest of the environment-an environment, be it remembered, which in the case of man is largely the creation of the living beings themselves, striving, often unconsciously, to mould the conditions of their lives more nearly to their hearts' desire. In this struggle for life, those individuals or species who possess some variation which is of advantage in existing circumstances, or, especially in the case of mankind, can be used to modify conditions in ways favourable to themselves, tend to survive at the expense of others, and to leave more offspring. Having increased chances of survival, by the action of heredity the qualities which ensure survival tend to reappear more freely in succeeding generations, and to become a characteristic of the race. That, in its essence, is the theory of Natural Selection.

It is impossible to overlook the analogy between the struggle for life in nature and the state of warfare in which primitive man often exists. If the natural struggle tends to the survival of the fittest, the presumption is that like effects will be produced by war among mankind. The strong and skilful hunter gets more food; the mighty warrior kills his enemies and takes possession of their wives. The fierce, warlike and well-disciplined

tribe overcomes the timid, peaceful and unorganised, and inherits the earth. And we may continue the analysis. When war ceases to be an affair of the individual, or even of the family or the tribe, and large armies come into being, the qualities of combination, of willing obedience, of unhesitating self-sacrifice, become necessary for success. They acquire biological survival value,' and thus, by heredity, become ingrained in the race. Hence, it is argued, war tends to develope these qualities; and it is to war that their increase, even their existence, is due.

It is perhaps natural to find the idea of the racial benefit of war most developed among the German nation, who, as has been well said, have made of war a national industry, and openly regard it as a periodic and legitimate extension of diplomatic action. Thus Otto Ammon says: 'In its collective effect war is a blessing for humanity, since it offers the only means of measuring the powers of nations against each other, and of adjudging victory to the most capable. War is the highest and most majestic form of the struggle for existence; it cannot be dispensed with, and therefore cannot be abolished.'

There is no doubt that such readings of the doctrine of natural selection, deliberately inculcated in the ordered teaching of the German nation, have played a large part in their recent psychological development. They have become a substitute for the principles of life and conduct based on Christian ethics, which were perhaps never wholly acceptable to the North German temperament. One sees, too, the common confusion of thought which so often follows the ambiguous use of the word 'fittest' in this connexion. With characteristic want of lucidity, German writers often assume that a survival of the fittest for war or for organised industry and commerce would secure the survival of the fittest for the Art of Life as a whole. They proceed to acclaim themselves the noblest achievement of the ages, in terms which have excited to mirth or pity that part of the civilised world which is gifted with a sense of humour, or recognises a divine purpose in human affairs. By a process of conscious or unconscious suggestion, they have taken a selection of their own qualities as their ideal, and intensified them by moulding their lives in the distorted image of

themselves, as, in Dyson's cartoon, the Kaiser Wilhelm kneels in adoration of a gigantic caricature of himself, in whose likeness he has fashioned his God.

Even if, in accordance with her expectation, Germany had swiftly triumphed in a war sprung on Europe at the moment of her choice, it would merely have shown that she was fittest among the nations to survive in the treacherous, clumsy and brutal environment into which she has turned a department of human activity that, if always dreadful, used to have in it some elements of the picturesque and chivalrous. It does not follow that she would have been the more fit to be trusted with the government of the world and the final control over the bodies and souls of the inhabitants.

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And yet another caution may be given about German racial pretensions. There are three chief races Europe: (1) the northern-tall, fair and long-skulled-found in greatest purity in Scandinavia and along part of the southern shores of the Baltic; (2) the southern or Mediterranean race-short, dark and long-skulled--inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; (3) the Alpine race, of medium stature and colouring, distinguished by a round bullet-shaped head, living in East Central Europe and probably representing an Asiatic influx.

Now, the northern race possesses certain valuable characters in a high degree, and in history has often appeared as the conqueror of its neighbours. German writers have become accustomed to annex the northern race by calling it Teutonic, and then, regardless of physical facts, have assumed that Germans are of purebred northern stock, and therefore, by right of birth as well as of success in war, entitled to the overlordship of the world. But, as a matter of fact, Germany has no more northern blood than England or northern France. In France and England the northern race is mingled with the southern, in Germany chiefly with the Alpinesouth Germany especially is full of round-skulled people. Even in parts of Prussia, which more even than other German States likes to pose as a natural conqueror, the population consists merely of a northern element overlying and intermixed with a substratum of eastern origin.