ENDS AND MEANS
(ii) Certain biologists, of whom Sir Arthur Keith is the
most eminent, consider that war acts as * nature's pruning
hook/ ensuring the survival of the fittest among civilized
individuals and nations. ' This is obviously nonsensical.
War tends to eliminate the young and strong and to
spare the unhealthy. Nor is there any reason for supposing
that people with traditions of violence and a good technique
of war-making are superior to other peoples. The most
valuable human beings are not necessarily the most war-
like. Nor as a matter of historical fact is it always the
most war-like who survive. We can sum up by saying that,
so far as individuals are concerned, war selects dysgenically;
so far as nations and peoples are concerned it selects purely
at random, sometimes ensuring the domination and survival
of the more war-like peoples, sometimes, on the contrary,
ensuring their destruction and the survival of the unwarlike.
(iii) There exist at the present time certain primitive
human societies, such as that of the Eskimos, in which
war is unknown and even unthinkable. All civilized
societies, however, are war-like. The question arises
whether the l cor relation between war and civilization is
necessary and unavoidable. The evidence of archaeology
seems to point to the conclusion that war ma'de its appear-
ance at a particular moment in the history of early
civilization. There is reason to suppose that the rise of
war was correlated with an abrupt change in the mode of
human consciousness. This change, as Dr. J. D. Unwin
suggests,1 may itself have been correlated with increased
sexual continence on the part of the ruling classes of the
war-like societies. The archaeological symptom of this
change is the almost sudden appearance of royal palaces
and elaborate funerary monuments. The rise of war
appears to be connected with the rise of self-conscious
leaders, preoccupied with the ideas of personal domination
1 In Sex and Culture (Oxford, 1934).
90