VII
Our civilization, therefore, carries within it the seeds of its own decay and destruction, and it does not require high prophetic gifts to predict the future of a race which goes the way marked out for it by such perversely suicidal institutions. It cannot improve, but must degenerate, and the only question would seem to be whether the decadence of Man will leave him viable as a biological species. At present it looks very much as though his blind leaders would lead their blinder followers from catastrophe to catastrophe, through imperialist world-wars to class-wars and to race-wars: but even if, by some miraculous rally of human intelligence,these convulsions should be averted, the prospect will not really be improved. The violent destruction of the human race by war will only be moredramatic: it will not be morefatalthan its gradual decay as its arts and sciences slowly fossilize, or peter out, in an overwhelming flood of feeble-mindedness.