CIVILIZATION AS A SELECTIVE AGENCY 479 



— to draw a sharp line between the social and the anti-social. That 

 psychology of individual differences which might enable us to grade 

 men and women into distinct ethical types is still in process of creation. 

 Yet in a broad empirical way it is easy to distinguish the moral quali- 

 ties favorable to communal life. The complete social person is marked, 

 fundamentally, by industry, self-control, kindliness, perseverance and 

 the ability to subordinate present pleasure to future welfare. Anti-so- 

 cial persons embody the opposite characteristics — shiftlessness, violence, 

 brutality, predatory tendencies, viciousness and impatience at restraint. 

 Of course these qualities, social and anti-social, combine in all sorts of 

 mixtures in all sorts of persons. But the principle is clear. As na- 

 ture's standards of fitness become progressively more civil the social 

 qualities stand a better and better chance, in contrast with their oppo- 

 sites, of perpetuation. 



One reason thinkers have overlooked the existence and operation of 

 this selective factor has been a too great preoccupation with the ques- 

 tion of intellectual and moral improvement. This, as we shall note 

 later, has led to wrong inferences from the data. The problem, in fact, 

 is not one of advance, but one of change. Another source of error has 

 been a confinement of attention to group selection, leading to excessive 

 emphasis of the importance of military success, and neglect of internal 

 selective processes in semi-military communities. 



It has long been recognized, of course, that before the emergence of 

 civilizations along the Nile and the Euphrates the race had been sub- 

 jected to discipline for hundreds of thousands of years. Men lived in 

 groups where tribal custom was supreme. The necessity of prolonged 

 care during infancy had sifted out the gentler mothers and fathers. 

 The clans, moreover, waged incessant war among themselves ; and fight- 

 ing strength and pugnacity being equal, the clan most solidly cemented 

 by fellow feeling succeeded in the conflict with less adhesive clans. So- 

 cial solidarity, crystallized and preserved in the " cake of custom," stood 

 at a survival premium. Therefore at the beginning of civilization selec- 

 tion had already picked out and conserved a certain minimum of tracta- 

 bility. 



Was this role of selection dropped with the passing of the predatory 

 pastoral stage and the setting up of orderly communal life ? Has the 

 capital of cooperative spirit, acquired before the pyramids, sufficed for 

 all subsequent elaborations ? Is not the truth rather that, although the 

 mode of eliminating the anti-social elements has altered, the process has 

 been continuous? Men began to be graded into classes, into occupa- 

 tions and castes. Up to that time man's nature had been clan-hewn. 

 Thereafter selection worked on the individuals within the group, sifting 

 them out in their extensive variety. 



