POLITICAL INTEGRATION. zgj 



against the Persians. So, too, was it with the Teutonic races. The 

 German tribes, originally without federal bond, formed occasional alli- 

 ances for war. Between the first and fifth centuries these tribes grad- 

 ually massed into great groups for resistance against or attack upon 

 Rome. During the subsequent century the prolonged military confed- 

 erations of peoples " of the same blood " had become states. And 

 afterward these became aggregated into still larger states. And, to 

 take a comparatively modern instance, it was during the wars between 

 France and England that each passed from that condition, in which its 

 component feudal groups were in considerable degrees independent, to 

 the condition of a consolidated nation. As further showing how inte- 

 gration of smaller societies into larger ones is thus initiated, it may be 

 added that at first the unions exist only for military purposes : each 

 component society retains for a long time its independent internal 

 administration, and it is only when joint action in war has become 

 habitual that the cohesion is made permanent by a common political 

 organization. 



This compounding of smaller communities into larger by military 

 cooperation is insured by the disappeai-ance of such smaller communi- 

 ties as do not cooperate. Barth remarks that " the Fulbe [Fulahs] are 

 continually advancing, as they have not to do with one strong enemy, 

 but with a number of small tribes without any bond of union." Of 

 the Damaras, Galton says : " If one werft is plundered, the adjacent 

 ones rarely rise to defend it, and thus the Namaquas have destroyed 

 or enslaved piecemeal about one half of the whole Damara popula- 

 tion." Similarly, according to Ondegardo, with the Inca conquests 

 in Peru : " There was no general opposition to their advance, for each 

 province merely defended its land without aid from any other." This 

 process, so obvious and familiar, I name because it has a meaning 

 which needs emphasizing. For we here see that, in the struggle for 

 existence among societies, the survival of the fittest is the survival of 

 those in which the power of military cooperation is the greatest ; and 

 military cooperation is that primary kind of cooperation which pre- 

 pares the way for other kinds of cooperation. So that this formation 

 of larger societies by the union of smaller ones in war, and this de- 

 struction or absorption of the smaller ununited societies by the united 

 larger ones, is an inevitable process through which the varieties of men 

 most adapted for social life supplant the less adapted varieties. 



Respecting the integration thus effected, it remains only to remark 

 that it necessarily follows this course necessarily begins with the for- 

 mation of simple groups and advances by the compounding and the 

 recompounding of these. Impulsive in conduct and with feeble pow- 

 ers of cooperation, savages cohere so slightly that only small bodies of 

 them can maintain their integrity. Not until such small bodies have 

 severally had their members bound to one another by some slight po- 

 litical organization does it become possible to unite them into larger 



