a sanction for war. Or, it is held, war is a method of selection, and is therefore a natural right. To such conceptions Nicolai opposes genuine science, the fundamental law of the increase in living beings,[1] and the law that there is a natural limit to growth.[2] It is obvious that the existence of these limitations imposes struggle upon individual beings and upon species, seeing that the world contains only a restricted quantity of energy, that is to say of nutriment. But Nicolai shows that war is the most paltry, the stupidest, one may even say the most ruinous, among all forms of struggle. Modern science, which enables us to estimate the amount of solar energy reaching our planet, shows us that the entire animal world does not as yet make use of more than one twenty thousandth part of the available supply. It is obvious that in these conditions war, that is to say the murder of another accompanied by the theft of that other's share of energy, is an inexcusable crime, It is, says Nicolai, as if loaves were lying about by the thousand, and we were nevertheless to kill a beggar in order to steal his crust. Mankind has an almost boundless field to exploit, and man's proper struggle is the struggle with nature. All other forms of struggle bring impoverishment and ruin, by distracting our attention from our main purposes. The creative method is based upon the harnessing of new and ever new sources of energy. The starting point was the prehistoric discovery of fire, when man for the first time was able to effect the explosive liberation of the solar energy stored up by plants. The discovery marked a new turn in human affairs, and was the dawn of man's supremacy over nature. During the last hundred years this new principle has been developed to such an enormous extent that human evolution has been entirely transformed. Nearly all the chief problems may be said to have been solved, and what remains requisite is the
- ↑ “Everything which exists, above all everything which lives, tends towards immeasurable increase.”
- ↑ For unicellular organisms, osmosis imposes a limit; for multicellular organisms there is a mechanical limit to size; for the groupings of individuals to form collectivities, social communities, there is a limit fixed by the amount of available energy.
