nt arts and
sciences, has also witnessed an unprecedented diminution in the strength
of the primeval spirit of militancy. It is not that we have got rid of
great wars, but that the relative proportion of human strength which has
been employed in warfare has been remarkably less than in any previous
age. In our own history, of the two really great wars which have
permeated our whole social existence,--the Revolutionary War and the War
of Secession,--the first was fought in behalf of the pacific principle
of equal representation; the second was fought in behalf of the pacific
principle of federalism. In each case, the victory helped to hasten the
day when warfare shall become unnecessary. In the few great wars of
Europe since the overthrow of Napoleon, we may see the same principle at
work. In almost every case the result has been to strengthen the pacific
tendencies of modern society. Whereas warfare was once dominant over the
face of the earth, and came home in all its horrid details to
everybody's door, and threatened the very existence of industrial
civilization; it has now become narrowly confined in time and space, it
no longer comes home to everybody's door, and, in so far as it is still
tolerated, for want of a better method of settling grave international
questions, it has become quite ancillary to the paramount needs, of
industrial civilization. When we can see so much as this lying before us
on the pages of history, we cannot fail to see that the final extinction
of warfare is only a question of time. Sooner or later it must come to
an end, and the pacific principle of federalism, whereby questions
between states are settled, like questions between individuals by due
process of law, must reign supreme over all the earth.

XIV.

End of the Working of Natural Selection upon Man. Throwing off the
Brute-Inheritance.

As regards the significance of Man's position in the universe, this
gradual elimination of strife is a fact of utterly unparalleled
grandeur. Words cannot do justice to such a fact. It means that the
wholesale destruction of life, which has heretofore characterized
evolution ever since life began, and through which the higher forms of
organic existence have been produced, must presently come to an end in
the case of the chief of God's creatures. It means that the universal
struggle for existence, having succeeded in bringing forth that
consummate product of creative energy, the Human Soul, h