DARWINISM AND GERMANISM.
[To ras EDITOR 01 THE " tireerAxon."]
SIR,—Lord Cromer's reference in your last issue to a German conception as "an instance of misapplied Darwinism " recalls a striking anticipation (and, by the way, a confirmation of your reviewer's point) of the present situation by that really fine thinker (to whom nous autres, his pupils, owe so much), the late D. G. .Ritchie, who in Darwinism, and Politics .(1889— note the date) says at p. 10 :—
"Evolution as applied to tho whole of the universe means a great deal more than the principle of natural selection. In the wider sense it is professedly applied to the guidance of life by Strauss in his famous book The Old Faith and the New, whero military conquest and social inequalities are expressly defended as right, because natural; and nothing but contempt is retort/et' for those who venture to hope for the abolition of war, who look beyond the limits of the nation, or who dream of a bettor Becht' order. It might be objected that in those passages we do not hear the voice of German science or philosophy, but of that reactionary military spirit which has infected the new German nation."
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