BRUTE FORCE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 159, 25 March 1918, Page 8

BRUTE FORCE

IS IT THE FOUNDATION OF A PERFECT SOCIAL SYSTEM? 'Iho idea that the ultimate element in any stable social system must be force underlies the teaching of modern German writers, and seems to have been taken for granted by a groat many of our own countrymen, despite the fact that the greatest of our philosophers have not voiced that opinion. Prussian militarism and tho doctrine that "Might is right" rest on the assumption that in the course of evolution the strongest and most efficient fighters must come to the top, and tliat the nobler and essentially human faculties of benevolence, sympathy, truth, and justice do not count in the struggle for existence. This is the doctrine of Bernhardi, and has naturally been accepted by the present rulers of Germany as in every way conforming to thoir ideals of military conquest and world domination. _ Thnt force is the ultimate test of ability to survive is apparently a sejf-evident fact, and those who are content with proximate explanations will accept it as admitting of no further discussion. Thero are in Nature many_ such apparent facts which prove on investigation to be absolutely wrong. Take sunset, for instance. We see the sun sink behind a hill, and can contend that this is an absolutely ultimate incontrovertible fact, yet every schoolboy knows that it is the hill which rises up and hides tho sun. Tho doctrine that Brute Force is the ultimate goal of evolution is probably on a simijar footing. Ai any rate, this German doctrine leaves many well-known facts wholly unexplained. If Brute Force were the ultimate test of survival, how is it that so many ancient forms of life, larger, stronger, and with much more efficient fighting weapons than those now existing, have become extinct? How is it that the vast majority of living crentures now on tho earth are almost defenceless? Take the hundreds of thousands of species of insects, for instance. How did poorlyarmed, primitive man utterly outstrip the gorilla in the struggle for existence, seeing that tho gorilla was naturally much the hotter fighting iinimnl? How have the faculties of benevolence, justice, etc., arisen in mun if _ Brute Force is the determining factor in stjecess? The fact remamß that the interpretation of evolution is a much more difficult mntter than those Germans are prepared to admit, and we must go to our own philosophers—-Dar-win, Spencer, and Huxley—if wo want to get the light on the true courso of evolution. In the meantime a certain amount nf Brute Forces is needed to counter the Goirnan Brute Force, otherwise the higher humanitarian qualities we so much appreciate may bo overwhelmed, so far_ as we are concerned. We must win this war 50 that the better things may triuninh, and to bring this about every man, woman, and child should subscribe to the third New Zealand War Loan.— (Published by arrangement.) :