Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/485

Rh the will to live is one who, speaking in the large, has found the conditions of civilized existence unbearable. Suicide as a selective agency is not negligible. The present annual rate for European countries runs above one hundred per million of living; and every day in the year there is a self-murder in the Prussian schools.

Occupational and geographical withdrawal, furthermore, is more significant than withdrawal from life. The hardy, callous, near-savage type of man has ever been employed to do the rough and dangerous work of civilization. From this obdurate material has, in all stages of industrial development, been drawn the sailors, the miners, the range-riders, the pioneers. The bonds of civilized life moreover, are an irritation to many strong and reckless spirits. Such cut loose; for so long as people live together in a net of social interrelations, some overactive elements will break through to the freer life of adventure. Hazardous occupations and adventurous callings have offered opportunity for segregation and voluntary exile. Who, from the first, have been our explorers, our soldiers of fortune, our gold-seekers? Of what stuff are the lads who, in all times, have "run away to sea" or "gone West"? Surely not those who were succeeding best in their trades, not the young men of peaceful ambitions, not those enamored of family life. In somewhat the same class are those restless or slothful souls who take to "the open road." The number of professional tramps in this country is about two hundred thousand. Their occupation is to avoid work: they are anti-social.

It is plain that those who withdraw socially or geographically from their kind contribute less than their normal share to the blood of prosperity. Combat and danger bring death to a considerable proportion. The rest are outside the pale of regular family life. In trading posts, in mining towns, along the frontiers, males are largely in excess; and they are relatively barren. The influence of this selective factor, coupled with the results of military selection, can hardly be over-emphasized. From the loins of the "stay-at-homes" come succeeding generations. The prophecy has been fulfilled; the meek have inherited the earth.

It may be worth while to notice more particularly the effects of military selection, especially because the peace advocates have recently, in their attempt to make out a strong case against war at this point, quite effectively muddled the subject. Possibly the persistence of the military organization, involving the continuous recruiting of a professional military class, alongside of the waxing industrial organization, is the most conspicuous fact in history. Selectively, the question to be asked is: what sorts of men have perished in war? Who marched away? The one patent answer is: not those who were the most peaceably inclined. The factors are, of course, complex; but military selection has