ed a duty to
defend itself. But this again only indicates the wretched state of
development in which we live. Undoubtedly, also, a certain amount of
military training is very useful, but there should be other ways, in a
democracy, to secure something of this needful training.

The struggle for existence, as expressed in human combat, does not
necessarily result in the survival of the most desirable, so far as we
are able to define desirability. We are confusing very unlike situations
in our easy application of the struggle for existence to war. The
struggle is not now between individuals to decide the fitter; it is
between vast bodies hurling death by wholesale. We pick the physically
fit and send them to the battle-line; and these fit are slain. This is
not the situation in nature from which we draw our illustrations.
Moreover, the final test of fitness in nature is adaptation, not power.
Adaptation and adjustment mean peace, not war. Physical force has been
immensely magnified in the human sphere; we even speak of the great
nations as "powers," a terminology that some day we shall regret. The
military method of civilization finds no justification in the biological
struggle for existence.

The final conquest of a man is of himself, and he shall then be greater
than when he takes a city. The final conquest of a society is of itself,
and it shall then be greater than when it conquers its neighboring
society.

Man now begins to measure himself against nature also, and he begins to
see that herein shall lie his greatest conquests beyond himself; in
fact, by this means shall he conquer himself,--by great feats of
engineering, by completer utilization of the possibilities of the
planet, by vast discoveries in the unknown, and by the final enlargement
of the soul; and in these fields shall be the heroes. The most virile
and upstanding qualities can find expression in the conquest of the
earth. In the contest with the planet every man may feel himself grow.

What we have done in times past shows the way by which we have come; it
does not provide a program of procedure for days that are coming; or if
it does, then we deny the effective evolution of the race. We have
passed witchcraft, religious persecution, the inquisition, subjugation
of women, the enslavement of our fellows except alone enslavement in
war.

Here I come particularly to a consideration of the struggle for
existence. Before I enter on this subject, I must