Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/475

 PHILOSOPHICAL BIOLOGY 469

every time he consults any orthodox Selectionist. For instance^ such a biologist will watch with you a hombill, a bird the size of a hen with a bill as large as the horn of a two-year-old buU^ as the creature strivea to get its bill out of its way so it can see its food, and tli^'flis^Uys'itB. ingenuity in getting the food far enough back in itH^junmobile^ bony mouth to enable it to swallow the morsel^ and will expl^ a smile how this bird and its ancestors have been ablV to survive in struggle for existence because of the masterful bill I Nl cMning, down to pure and overwhelming logic^ such a biologist will affirm'^^m&^^ittS* out a smile) that you are bound to accept his explanation of the horn- bill's bill unless you have some better explanation to offer I And he will go yet further (still in dead earnest) and tell you he and not you, must be the judge of which explanation is better. A very rudimentary sense of humor is another and by no means an unimportant trait-in-common between Nietzscheans and the dominant school of speculative biologists. But that in particular which ought to make these biologists join with the disciples of Nietzsche in proclaiming their prophet the supreme philosopher of evolution is intimated in the above quotation^

Nature's conformity to law is no matter of fact. . . but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern souL

The tap-root of the life philosophy of both groups is the dogma that the gross, easily seen living things about us everywhere and all the time are "mere outward expressions'* of an Essence, deep, invisible, intangible, a comprehension of the working of which and the control of which is the goal of all life science.

To be sure, the fact that temperamentally Nietzsche was highly ar- tistic and very little scientific made him interpret and evaluate human life in terms very different from those used by the biologists when they treat of man. But the close kindred between "Nietzsche's cloud-like visions of Eternal Recurrence and Superman " and the nebulous heredi- tary substance, germ plasm, and " The Fit" of most biological eugenists should not be overlooked by anybody interested in problems of human welfare. Nietzsche's followers have not been slow to see the meaning of the man-breeding proposals of our day. Miigge says :

In Galton's Eugenics, founded upon the idea of evolution and the assump- tion that the human wiU is in some small measure capable of guiding the course of evolution, we see a scientific realization of Nietzsche's dreams.

And let no one, especially in this democratic country of ours, neglect to mark well the character of those dreams : Aristocracy carried through to its logical end. The best shall rule and " by means of force." The best shall be masters; the commonalty their slaves, literally and not figuratively. The only law shall be the law of the strong, the fit.

Those eugenists whose biological philosophy rests on germ-plasmic

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