In the first place such a doctrine leads directly to the conclusion that war, instead of being the curse and disaster which all reasonable people, not to say all Christians, feel it to be, is, as Bernhardi puts it, "a biological necessity, a regulative element in the life of mankind that cannot be dispensed with." It is "the basis of all healthy development." "Struggle is not merely the destructive but the life-giving principle. The law of the strong holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to secure for themselves the most favourable conditions. The weaker succumb." Humanity has had at times evidences of the results of this teaching which are not, one may fairly say, of a kind to commend themselves to any person possessed of a moderately kindly, not to say of a Christian, disposition. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have the opportunity of studying the experiment in actual operation in a race which, of course in entire ignorance of the fact, is actually putting into practice the teachings of Natural Selection, though it must be admitted that the practice has not been successful, nor does it look like being successful, in raising that race above the very lowest rung of the ladder of civilisation. Captain Whiffen[19] has given a very complete and a very interesting account of the peoples whom he met with during his wanderings in the regions indicated by the title of his book. And he tells us that "the survival of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of life in the Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians' life and philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would often be to prejudice the chances of the fit. There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of existences rather than risk greater misery?" Let us now see the kind of life which the author, freed himself no doubt from "the bugbear of hell," considers eminently sensible--the kind of life of which only an "arm-chair sentimentalist" would disapprove; a kind of life, it may be added, which will appear to most ordinarily minded people as being one of selfishness raised to its highest power.