n the ancient way, peoples elsewhere
will move on. Those who have grasped the meaning of science,
especially biological science, are feeling after new rules of conduct.
The old criteria based on ignorance have little worth. "Rights,"
whether of persons or of nations, may be abstractions well-founded in
law or philosophy, but the modern world sooner or later will annul
them.

The general ignorance of science has lasted so long that we have
virtually two codes of right and duty, that founded on natural truth
and that emanating from tradition, which almost alone finds public
expression in this country. Whether we look at the cruelty which
passes for justice in our criminal courts, at the prolongation of
suffering which custom demands as a part of medical ethics, at this
very question of education, or indeed at any problem of social life,
we see ahead and know that science proclaims wiser and gentler creeds.
When in the wider sphere of national policy we read the declared
ideals of statesmen, we turn away with a shrug. They bid us exalt
national sentiment as a purifying and redeeming influence, and in the
next breath proclaim that the sole way to avert the ruin now menacing
the world is to guarantee to all nations freedom to develop,
"unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid." So, forsooth, are we to end war.
Nature laughs at such dreams. The life of one is the death of another.
Where are the teeming populations of the West Indies, where the
civilisations of Mexico or of Peru, where are the blackfellows of
Australia? Since means of subsistence are limited, the fancy that one
group can increase or develop save at the expense of another is an
illusion, instantly dissipated by appeal to biological fact, nor would
a biologist-statesman look for permanent stability in a multiplication
of competing communities, some vigorous, others worthless, but all
growing in population. Rather must a people familiar with science see
how small and ephemeral a thing is the pride of nations, knowing that
both the peace of the world and the progress of civilisation are to be
sought not by the hardening of national boundaries but in the
substitution of cosmopolitan for national aspiration.

[Footnote 1: _Les Lois de l'Imitation_, 1911, p. 87.]

[Footnote 2: Reported in _Evening Standard_, 11 Sept. 1916.]

[Footnote 3: Two Cambridge men spoke, one being Lord Rayleigh, the
Chairman, and ten Oxford men, besides one originally Cambridge, for
several ye