Evolution and war.

TL;DR: The London School of Economics and Political Science is packed away in a small building near Kingsway, but it is one of the most flourishing and fruitful schools of the University of London; and the meetings of its Students' Union sometimes attract quite a considerable audience of students and their friends.

Abstract: The London School of Economics and Political Science is packed away in a small building near Kingsway, but it is one of the most flourishing and fruitful schools of the University of London; and the meetings of its Students' Union sometimes attract quite a considerable audience of students and their friends. Of this kind was the meeting held on November 4 under the chairmanship of Mr. Edward Twentyman, when Sir Ronald Ross addressed the Union on the subject of Evolution and War. Sir Ronald made the present war the text of his speech. He referred to a sanguinary combat which he had witnessed once in Burma. His audience listening to the detailed horrors of it were relieved at length to learn that the battles had been of ants and not of men; but starting from this point, the speaker indicated the number of directions in which the combative instinct appeared to operate throughout Nature, with apparently disastrous results to the individual. Why, he asked, did Nature allow such an appalling phenomenon? According to Darwin the result was beneficial because it led to the elimination of the less effective. War differed from other selective agencies in that it might wipe out an entire race; and the intellectual and moral gap between man and the next highest creatures was possibly as great as it was by reason of man's warlike nature. Tribal evolution under the moulding of war would suffice to explain the development of such virtues as self-sacrifice, courage, constancy, obedience, and the honourable keeping of compacts in spite of self-interest. Such qualities would be mere foolishness to a Martian evolved in a warless environment. But we, when we blamed a man for being selfish, or a coward, or dishonourable, really accused him of being dysgenic--of not possessing the qualities which millions of years of tribal evolution should have given him. He is imperfect, like a lunatic or a deformed person. It happens that the warlike virtues are the social virtues, and so they affect social evolution enormously. In their entirety they are covered by the word "duty," and of duty sprang religion. From the warlike virtues too sprang much of poetry and music. The purely intellectual qualities of cunning, observation, accurate reasoning, the faculty of inventing tools, and of seizing opportunities are too obviously associated with the warlike spirit to need much emphasis. Sir Ronald proceeded to quote some arguments which had been directed against the view outlined. Darwin himself had pointed out that the best and finest young men were exposed to early death during war, while shorter and feebler men were left at home to propagate their kind. The Chancellor of Stamford University had stated that war was utterly dysgenic. But the speaker pointed out that the facts were all against the theory. The warlike nations were the nations of splendid manhood. He instanced the Zulus and Masai, the Sikhs and Pathans--and referred to the miserable physique of the unwarlike tribes. …