Why is it that the universal horror of this War does not lead to repentance for war-making? Repentance, that is, for the habitual indulgence of motives and methods of daily living that make armies and navies, secretaries of war (actually normal in times of peace), international animosities, and finally war itself a characteristic phase of nationalism? Why don’t we turn over a new leaf? Made-to-order psychology which attributes the climax of fighting to a fighting instinct, ignoring the actual antecedents of every actual war, does not get us far toward an explanation, even if it has within itself a fragment of truth. We must go back to our everyday living if we are to explain our reluctance to repent for war-making, and we must see our everyday living in terms primarily of our wants and our notions about them. Practically nobody wants war; we are not exactly tigers and vultures; but something prevents us from having robust confidence in our ability to avoid the fatal steps. Fortunately, we are not consistently depreciative of ourselves. Even at Versailles, much more in the League of Nations (with all its handicaps and timidities), still more, possibly, in the World Court, an inextinguishable hope, a living shoot of real confidence in human nature, is perceptible. What shall come of it will depend, in some measure, upon stopping to consider what we want, and then thinking straight. IV HAS THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION DEGRADED US IN OUR OWN EYES? What keeps alive the notion that the theory of evolution derogates from the dignity of man? One would suppose, offhand, that nothing but our own conduct could either disgrace or dignify us except to minds that judge by perverted standards. In a period of history in which society has begun to shake off artificial class-distinctions, and to permit men to rise or fall by virtue of their own individual force or lack of force, how can we revert to an exaggerated pride or shame of ancestry? A third of a century ago a college student, for the first time coming to close quarters with the biological view of man, asked, “Professor, what becomes of our respect for man if he is a blood-relative of the beasts?” I replied, mindful of the fact that this student and his family were new Americans, “Does the worth of an individual depend upon what his grandfather was, or rather upon what he himself is?” The student, with a laugh, promptly took the position of all believers in democracy--“A man’s a man for a’ that!”