It is perhaps little to be wondered at that the intense preoccupation
which the study of science entails should tend to induce those whose
attention is constantly fixed on Nature to imagine that from Nature can
be drawn not only lessons of physical life but lessons also of conduct.
Of course this is quite wrong; for Nature has no moral lesson to teach
us. We are told to go to the ant--at least the sluggard is--but for
what? To amend his sluggardliness. No one has ever suggested that we
should go to Nature to learn to be humble, kindly, unselfish, tolerant,
and Christian, in our dealings with others; and for this excellent
reason, that none of these things can be learnt from Nature. Science is
neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral; and, as we have seen a
thousand times in this present war, its kindest gifts to man can be
used, and are used, for his cruel destruction. In this war,
pre-eminently amongst all wars, we have the application of pure natural
principles unameliorated by the influences of Christianity, or of
chivalry, Christianity's offspring. As Sir Robert Borden has summed it
up, German kultur is an attempt "to impose upon us the law of the
jungle."

Natural Selection, some would have us believe, is the dominant law of
living nature, and all would agree that it is an important law. Let us
then, if we are to follow Nature, put it into practice. But Natural
Selection means the Survival of the Fittest in the Struggle for Life. It
consequently means the Extermination of the Less Fit, a little fact
often left out of count. It means in three words "Might is Right," and
was not that exactly the proposition by which we were confronted in this
war? If Natural Selection be our only guide, let us sink hospital
ships, destroy innocent villages and towns, exterminate our weaker
opponents in any way that seems best to us. It was all summed up
centuries ago by the author of the Book of Wisdom: "Let us oppress the
poor just man, and not spare the widow, nor honour the ancient grey
hairs of the aged. But let your strength be the law of justice: for that
which is feeble is found to be nothing worth." That is Natural Selection
in operation in human life when human beings have been stripped of all
"mythical ideas of Sin:" not a pretty picture nor a condition of affairs
under which we should like long to exist. Some of the other resemblances
are less dreadful, but none the less instructive. Let us take the matter
of Mimicry. Th