language is unintelligible in Germany, though Englishman and German are offshoots from the same stock, the German of the North can hardly understand the German of the South; Dutch and English vessels have fought desperately at sea, in the past, and to-day, Dutch and English are face to face in South Africa; England and America have fought two wars; the Northern and Southern states of this country have fought one. As far back as we can go the same condition reveals itself; Greece humiliates her sister Persia, and falls before her more powerful sister, Rome: the barbarians who sack Rome in the fifth century and the Romans themselves are of the same Aryan stock: so are the English and Russians, who seem about to grapple in a deadly struggle to-day. To assign a limit to this process of selection seems as impossible in the future, as in the past. Yet it may well be doubted whether, amidst the host of the fallen, there were not many who were worthier than those who have survived.

[Pg 9]

Forty years ago, Hallam, after reviewing the Middle Ages, was forced to say: “We cannot from any past experience, indulge the pleasing vision of a constant and parallel relation between the moral and intellectual energies, the virtues and civilization of mankind.” And to-day, it is an almost accepted view, that the least difference between the savage and the civilized man is the difference in morality. It follows that morality has played no conspicuous part in the process of selection; that the extermination of others does little or nothing to improve the character of those who survived; and finally, since Japan has put on European civilization as easily as a Japanese can put on a suit of English clothes, that civilization is a varnish, spread over the material beneath. That this is the real belief of nearly every one of us, and has always been so, our judgment of the conduct of individuals proves. Do we go about the streets giving prizes to octogenarians, or put down to wickedness the early death of a child? Why then, should we otherwise regard long life in a whole people? Do we applaud the superior strength or cunning of Cain, or pretend that the discovery of gun-powder strengthened the arm of the good? No, neither loyalty, nor victory is the true test;—it is by their fruits that God will know them.

Let us, then, throw away this narrow, self-justifying doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and follow instead the noble counsel of Milton:—

Nor love thy life, nor hate, but what thou liv’st, live well. How long or short permit to heaven.

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