Spurred on by a complex set of psychological and economic
stimuli, man took to fighting his own kind, to a degree that no other
species shows.
Now contrary to what the militarist philosophers affirm, this particular
sort of "struggle for existence" is not a necessity to the further
progressive evolution of the race. On the contrary it more frequently
reverses evolution and makes the race go backward, rather than forward.
The struggle for existence which makes the race progress is principally
that of the species with its environment, not that of some members of
the species with others. If the latter struggle could be supplanted by
the former then racial evolution would go ahead steadily without the
continuous reversals that warfare now gives.
William James saw, we believe, the true solution of the problem of
militarism, when he wrote his famous essay on _The Moral Equivalent of
War_. Here is man, full of fighting instinct which will not be baulked.
What is he to do? Professor James suggested that the youth of the nation
be conscripted to fight the environment, thus getting the fight "out of
its system" and rendering a real service to the race by constructive
reclamation work, instead of slaying each other and thus turning the
hands of the evolutionary clock backward.
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