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 more _dramatic_:
it will not be more _fatal_ than its gradual decay as its arts and
sciences slowly fossilize, or peter out, in an overwhelming flood of
feeble-mindedness.