Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/500

 494 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

such a battle. No man really believeB in reliance upon the nat- ural law of the survival of the fittest to bring about, without direction, results in which he is immediately and personally interested. Certainly those who talk about the necessity of war and assert their belief in the natural law of the survival of the fittest do not act upon this belief in matters of personal concern. Would such persons, if a child of theirs were in battle with a ferocious animal, stand quietly by and console themselves with the reflection that the fittest will survive? Would they, if engaged in agriculture, carefully prepare the ground, sow the seed, and after the germination of the crop leave the plants to struggle with the weeds in order that the fittest might survive? Certainly not I No more should the world expect continuous progress as a result of war.

We have now seen that war is not an essential part of the struggle for existence, and that> while it results in the survival of the fittest, it does not necessarily result in progress, the reason being that the fittest are not necessarily the best. It remains to show that the whole case for war rests upon a profound misconception of the nature and significance of natural law. It will appear that the law of the survival of the fittest, instead of being an obstacle in the way of the achievement of continuous peace, is the condition that makes such achievement a possibility. First, let us consider the question : What is a law of nature?

If we think of the world in terms of the philosophy of idealism, it is a world consisting wholly in sense-impressions. Says Pearson :

These flense-impreBsions appear to follow an unchanging rontine capable of expression in the brief formula of science because the perceptive and reflective faculties are machines of practically the same type in aU normal human beings.*

Prom this view a natural law is merely a brief description of the rec- ognized sequence of sense-impressions. If, on the other hand, we regard the world as what it seems to be, namely, a collection or aggregation of material phenomena, then a natural law is merely a statement of the coexistence and sequence of such phenomena. In neither case is a law of nature what many appear to suppose it to be, that is, an expression of the will of a superior authority commanding obedience. It is a wholly mistaken idea that the laws of nature are commands, and that they are to be discovered in order to be obeyed. I suspect this idea lies at the bottom of the consciousness of those who claim that the survival of the fittest is an effective bar to the promotion of peace. They think of a natural law as in the nature of a command, and not, as it really is, a mere formula for expressing uniformity in the action of some natural force or forces so long as the conditions are the same. A natural law is not a prescription, but a description; we owe it no allegiance; the

s Pearson, K, '' Grammar of Science," London, 1895, p. 132.

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