kingdoms, where thousands are called into
fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness
is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn
with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs
to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves
consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is
comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in
the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect
through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas
'unfit' for survival.

I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the
case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and
wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its
place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings:
its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance
distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage
of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective
intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or
intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is
predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.

If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there
purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of
obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a
community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised
or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that
these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed
to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised
life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is
the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which
will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and
positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate
the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the
victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by
natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural
selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the
conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle:
has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the
intelligent organiser of victory.

Even in th