3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



But that which, was faintly indicated among lower beings is 

 conspicuously displayed among human beings — that the advan- 

 tages of co-operation can be had only by conformity to certain 

 requirements which association imposes. The mutual hindrances 

 liable to arise during the pursuit of their ends by individuals liv- 

 ing in proximity, must be kept within such limits as to leave a 

 surplus of advantage obtained by associated life. Some types of 

 men, as the Abors, lead solitary lives, because their aggressiveness 

 is such that they can not live together. And in view of this ex- 

 treme case it is clear that though, in many primitive groups, indi- 

 vidual antagonisms often cause quarrels, yet the groups are main- 

 tained because their members derive a balance of benefit — chiefly 

 in greater safety. It is also clear that in proportion as commu- 

 nities become developed and their division of labor complex, the 

 advantages of co-operation can be gained only by a still better 

 maintenance of those limits to each man's activities necessitated 

 by the simultaneous activities of others. This truth is illustrated 

 by the unprosperous or decaying state of communities in which 

 the aggressions of individuals on one another are so numerous 

 and great as to prevent them from severally receiving the normal 

 results of their actions. 



The requirement that individual activities must be mutually 

 restrained, which we saw is so felt among certain inferior grega- 

 rious creatures that they inflict punishments on those who do not 

 duly restrain them, is a requirement which, more imperative 

 among men, and more distinctly felt by them to be a require- 

 ment, causes a still more marked habit of inflicting punishments 

 on offenders. Though in primitive groups it is commonly left to 

 any one who is injured to revenge himself on the injurer, and 

 though even in the societies of feudal Europe, the defending and 

 enforcing of his claims was in many cases held to be each man's 

 personal concern ; yet there has ever tended to grow up such per- 

 ception of the need for internal order, and such sentiment accom- 

 panying the perception, that infliction of punishments by the com- 

 munity as a whole, or by its established agents, has become habit- 

 ual. And that a system of laws enacting restrictions on conduct, 

 and punishments for breaking them, is a natural product of human 

 life carried on under social conditions, is shown by the fact that 

 among multitudinous nations composed of various types of man- 

 kind, similar actions, similarly regarded as trespasses, have been 

 similarly forbidden. 



Through all which sets of facts is manifested the truth, recog- 

 nized practically if not theoretically, that each individual carrying 

 on the actions which subserve his life, and not prevented from 

 receiving their normal results good and bad, shall carry on these 

 actions under such restraints as are imposed by the carrying on of 



