104 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



mony. Songs and dances in the moonlight, preceded by a 

 period in which the young couples paired off to enact the 

 roles of married people, gave the youngsters a chance to 

 choose their own mates. The boys hunted and the girls 

 cooked and set up housekeeping. In the evening a custom 

 much like the "bundling" of the puritanical New Eng- 

 enders of another day brought them closer together, a 

 counterpart of American "dating, courting, and petting." 



Studies of primitive peoples have given the anthropolo- 

 gists and psychologists much that is helpful in explaining 

 many of the emotions and actions of modem man. As a 

 society advances in its economic life it gains in control over 

 its environment, and the population density increases. This 

 gives the society added survival value, but there is always 

 the problem of overpopulation which must eventually be 

 solved. As we shall see in Chapter 14, modern societies are 

 faced with this problem as never before in the history of the 

 world. 



In man's society unconscious controls have been of value 

 in the past. They are still at work but at levels far below 

 the needs of modern civilizations, and one clearly sees that 

 blind forces are not likely to resolve social problems of such 

 present-day complexity. We have already concluded that 

 the usual evolutionary forces will not operate fast enough 

 to be of value in the immediate future, and that man must 

 turn to conscious controls. Basic gregarious impulses in man 

 and the love of his fellows are not lacking, but they are 

 weaker than the more individualistic instincts of pugnacity 

 and self-preservation. It would seem that the tendency to- 

 ward mutual aid can be augmented only through educa- 

 tional indoctrination, and then be gradually stamped into 

 the character of man of the next few millennia by the trans- 

 mission of acquired social characters. 



Through folklore and in early historic records there ap- 

 pears an increasing consciousness of the concept of broth- 

 erly love, but we do not find it expressed in a formalized 



