VIII
A FALLACY MADE IN GERMANY
During the Great War the question was asked, “Do the inexorable laws of evolution apply to human beings as they apply to the lower animals and to plants?” Most assuredly they do, but with a difference. Man is as certainly one of the results of the evolutionary process as is the horse or the dog, the tree or the plant. We are as certain of his animal origin as we can well be of anything in the biological history of the globe. But the inference which has so often been drawn from this fact—namely, that man’s development involves the same factors, and is along parallel lines—is a fallacy. That the supremacy of might, which has ruled, and still rules in nature below man, justifies the rule of might in human communities in our day, is an invention of perverted human ambition.
As Nature rules by the law of might, and as man is a part of Nature, why is he not under the same rule? The answer is that man is an exceptional creature; that while he is a part of the animal kingdom, he is a new kind of animal; and while he is the outcome of evolution, like the rest, new factors which are not operative in the orders below him have played a leading part in his later development. These factors are his reason, which gives him a sense of the true and the false, and his conscience, which gives him a sense of right and wrong. These faculties subordinate the rule of might to the rule of right. They have resulted in the establishment of standards of conduct for individuals, for communities, and for organized governments that do not exist among the lower animal orders, and only in a very limited sense in the lower human orders.
There is no question of right and wrong among the plants of the field, or the trees of the forest, or the birds of the air, or the beasts of the earth—only the question of power to survive; might in the sense of power of adaptation settles the question.
Since the dawn of history man’s moral and intellectual faculties have come more and more to the fore, the moral standards always lagging a little behind the intellectual and the æsthetic standards. Among nearly all the more advanced ancient races the concepts of justice, of mercy, and of fair dealing were dull and sluggish in comparison with their intellectual acumen and their artistic achievements. The Greeks would lie and steal and set on foot piratical expeditions against their neighbors, while yet they produced such men as Aristotle and Plato, and such artists as Phidias and Praxiteles.
In our day the whole civilized world was shocked and alarmed by the moral lapse of a great people ranking among the highest in intelligence and material efficiency, suddenly preaching and practicing the doctrine of might over right which prevails in the orders below man. The German philosophers brazenly justified their nation’s course in their aggressive war, with all its attendant horrors, by an appeal to the Darwinian doctrines of the struggle for existence, and the consequent survival of the fittest, doctrines which play such a prominent part in biological evolution. The nation suddenly slumped into a barbarism worse than that of their ancestral Huns. The Hun was again triumphant, gloating over the prospect of the rich plunder and the orgies of wine and lust that awaited him in new fields of conquest. It was a spectacle to make the Genius of Humanity veil her face and weep tears of blood.
All that was noble and precious in international relations; standards of conduct that it had taken long generations to achieve; the peace and good-will of the world; coöperation in scientific fields, and in endeavors toward human betterment—all went by the board before the Teutonic debauch of greed and lust for blood and conquest.
Seriously to discuss in our day the question of the rule of might over right—that force is the arbiter of justice in human relations, except when it is invoked to chastise the offender—seems a waste of time. On how low a plane must a people live whose leaders appeal to the way of the tiger with his prey, or of the boa constrictor with his victim, in establishing relations with other peoples! This ferocious appeal of kaiserism to predatory nature—to “Nature red in tooth and claw”—in order to set itself right before the conscience of mankind, is as fatuous as it is fallacious. If we could reckon without the sense of right and wrong, which has a survival value as real as any form of physical might or power of adaptation, especially with the later civilized nations (except Germany), a different face would be put upon the question. But we cannot. The floodtide of world democracy and humanity is setting too strongly in that direction, and we can only hope and pray that misguided Germany may in the new generation be caught up and borne forward to new greatness and world usefulness, on the bosom of the same tide.