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If the European war, in its future consequences, should bring about certain modifications in the actual frontiers of one or the other of the Balkan States, the interest of Rumania requires that the Balkan equilibrium be established in accordance with the changes made to correspond with the purpose of maintaining the real equilibrium in its new form, no matter what the frontier lines will be in their final re-establishment. In connection with the attitude of Rumania in the presence of the European war no new decision has been taken. All the political parties are subjecting their attitude to the action of the Government. Mr. von Busch, the new Minister of Germany, has arrived and was received yesterday in confidence by King Charles.

In fact the very reverse has come to pass: the philosophy of Slavophilism has arisen in Muscovy, yet not so much arisen as it has developed with the Russian soul, not as a thing apart, but as a quality thereof, blossoming somehow with all other Russian things, out of the primitive Scythian darkness. The rebellious spirit having been crushed out of the generations since, what is left but non-resistance? Yet in these latter years a resisting spirit, nursed and suckled largely in western Europe, has falsely made it appear that all Russia was in arms, storming with chaotic unity at the church, the state and the army, deluging their ancient customs with the destructive and re-creative might of radicalism. Far and wide of the truth is this! Let no one think the vast heart of Russia has changed! Only the few have cast away the ancient quiet; only the few have the modern consciousness instead of the medieval, theocratic one; only the few are not at heart Slavophiles in feeling and in morality.

Race or breed was a moment ago described as a factor in human nature. But to break up human nature into factors is something that we can do, or try to do, in thought only. In practice we can never succeed in doing anything of the kind. A machine such as a watch we can take to bits and then put together again. Even a chemical compound such as water we can resolve into oxygen and hydrogen and then reproduce out of its elements. But to dissect a living thing is to kill it once and for all. Life, as was said in the first chapter, is something unique, with the unique property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary process. Just up to what point it goes in any given case we probably can never quite tell. Yet, if we could think our way anywhere near to that point in regard to man, I doubt not that we should eventually succeed in forging a fresh instrument for controlling the destinies of our species, an instrument perhaps more powerful than education itself--I mean, eugenics, the art of improving the human breed.

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