Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/157

 WAB SELECTION IN THE PHILIPPINES 151

��WAB SELECTIONT IN THE PHILIPPINES

Bt Db. EDWIN BINGHAM COPEO^AND

DBAH or TH9 COU^ICaB 09 ABBlCVUrUVB, WTVEBSITT OF THB PHIUFPINllS, LOS BANOB,

LUZOK

IT has been assumed by writers on the relation of war to racial devel- opment — and I am sure the assumption is correct — ^that fighting has at some time been necessary to keep up the quality of the race. Some kind of struggle^ war or economic competition^ or something of this kind^ must have been necessary to maintain human progress from the time that man acquired such a mastery over the rest of nature that he was spared the necessity of a real struggle with other animals. I have had the impression from some of the early papers of Dr. Jordan that he granted the correctness of this assumption^ but believed that modern warfare was peculiar in not having this selection value. This would have implied^ even if it were not stated^ that the wars of ancient but historical people did have a selection value. This is explicitly de- nied in  War and the Breed, and is certainly denied with right. In the wars of the Greeks, selection of the best by survival was probably even less likely than it is in the present European war. In the warfare of to-day, the best are eliminated both because they are admitted to the army, and because the brave ones sometimes get a chance to expose them- selves; but in the present warfare, there is so little chance to select the enemy to be killed, that the picking of the victims is essentially without any choice whatever. In the warfare of the Greeks, even leaving the Spartan out of account, social custom drove the good citizen to war and forced the brave man to expose himself at almost every opportunity. The brave or the strong man was driven by the fuU force of social pressure and by his own sense of honor to take every possible risk, and this, of course, eliminated the best more rapidly than would be done by the present war. Beyond this, the man of ability was most dangerous to the enemy, and as a general proposition, there was particular glory to be acquired by killing a notable foe. This placed the best warriors at a considerable disadvantage as compared with their present position.

I note a passage in Thucydides. The Athenians captured a consider- able body of Spartans on the Island of Sphacteria. Some of the Athenians were deriding one of the captives and asked Viirn if the ones who had been killed had not been braver men. The captive replied that it would have to be a very wise arrow which could distinguish the brave from the cowardly. His comment would place warfare where it is to- day, an indiscriminate slaughter of the combatants.

I have had considerable opportunity during twelve years in this part of the world to see the effect of warfare of various kinds on the race. It seems to me that we have in the Philippines illustrations of both

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