CB195 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY JOHN L. BRANDT AIMBOLIAD The Gorham Press, Boston, U.S. A. INTRODUCTION BY DR. JAMES W. Lee. HE difference between the Law of Survival under the TH reign of which animals make their way in the world, and the Law of Survival by the observance of which human beings attain supremacy, is infinite. According to the Law of Survival which prevails among animals and plants, only the fittest, the physically strongest, have any promise of a career. The living creatures in the natural world tend to multiply at so rapid a rate that any one species, were it not kept in check, would in a few generations over-populate the globe and utterly outgrow all possible means of subsistence. Bishop Randolph S. Foster calculated that if all the English sparrows that are hatched were permitted to live and propagate their species, it would not be many generations before enough of them would come into existence to cover the face of the earth more than a mile deep. Because so many more animals are born than can find food enough to live on, and because there are so many more seeds produced by the trees and plants than can find soil enough to grow on, there is necessarily a great struggle for existence perpetually raging everywhere. According to the Law of Survival in the natural world, the many that are weak are sacrificed for the sake of the few that are strong. According to the Law of Survival in the human world, the few who are strong sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the many who are weak. The law of animal survival is aristocratic; it preserves and justifies the struggles of the few against the many. The Law of Survival in the human 328437 world is democratic; it pours life into the failing hearts of the weak to make them fit to live. The animal Law of Survival is physical. The human Law of Survival is moral. If man is a brute and nothing more the law of the physical is as completely adapted to him as to the living creatures beneath him. If death closes the career of man and beast alike, then it is well for both, if inefficient and weak, if ailing and diseased, to go down together in the struggle, in order that the strong and the efficient may have wider opportunity to complete their lives. But man is not a brute. He is essentially a spirit. Therefore, the law of his life, the law in obedience to which he attains supremacy, is not summed up in Darwin's famous sentence: "The survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence." The rule Darwin defined from a study of life in the plant and animal kingdoms, is the law of economy, under the sway of which the many are sacrificed for the few. It is the law by which the superfluous and unfit are destroyed that the strong may have room in which to flourish. But human beings do not become strong by driving the weak to the wall; they become strong by lifting the weak. They become good by sacrificing for the bad in order that the bad may become good. Human beings do not become wise by destroying the foolish but rather by sharing their wisdom with the foolish so that they may cease to be foolish. Human beings do not become strong by ousting the morally weak, but by lending them their own moral strength that they may become strong. Human beings do not become holy by eliminating the vicious and depraved: they attain sanctity by sacrificing for the erring, by sympathizing with them, by helping them in order to lift them to a higher moral and spiritual level. The supremacy of one race of people, therefore, in comparison with that of other races, is to be determined by finding out which one of the peoples under consideration conforms most completely to the Laws of Survival in obedience to which human supremacy is attained, which one pos sesses most of the elements that constitute supremacy in the kingdom of human life. Dr. Brandt has made a careful survey of the history of the different races of the world, ancient and modern, and he presents in this book abundant evidence to establish his contention that the Anglo-Saxon is entitled to the place of supremacy among the races of mankind. He shows that supremacy among human beings is not achieved, as it is among lions and tigers, by the expenditure of brute force in crushing the weak, but that it is attained by the expenditure of spiritual force in sacrificing for the helpless and the erring in body, mind and soul. If supremacy among men were achieved just as it is among the lower animals, then the question of establishing the truth of Anglo-Saxon supremacy would simply consist in showing that the Anglo-Saxon people had more bowie-knives, more battleships, more rifles, more cannon, more dynamite, more aëroplanes, more brute force than any of the other nations of the world. Supremacy based upon the single element of physical strength represented by iron and gunpowder is not permanent, and if it were it would be on the same level with that of the lion, who is known as "the king of the jungle" because of his physical strength. Supremacy among animals is won and maintained in obedience to the single dominant principle of physical strength. Among them this principle has complete mastery and all animal life is developed in subordination to it. In a great speech delivered at Yale College more than thirty years ago, Dr. Andrew D. White called attention to the fact that no nation could win and maintain permanent supremacy when the whole of its life was subordinated by any single principle. He called attention to the generalization of Guizot, where he pointed out the broad difference between the civilizations of antiquity and that, for instance, of modern England. According to Guizot, Dr. White declared, the evolution of each of those great phases of ancient civilization was in obedience to some dominant prin |