736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of society or citizen — necessarily runs counter to that which the non- 

 ethical man — the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the 

 animal kingdom — tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle 

 for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal ; the former 

 devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle. 



In the cycle of phenomena presented by the life of man, the animal, 

 no more moral end is discernible than in that presented by the lives 

 of the wolf and of the doer. However imperfect the relics of pre- 

 historic men may be, the evidence which they afford clearly tends to 

 the conclusion that, for thousands and thousands of years, before the 

 orgin of the oldest known civilizations, men were savages of a very 

 low type. They strove with their enemies and their competitors ; 

 they preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than themselves ; 

 they were born, multiplied without stint, and died, for thousands of 

 generations, alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the 

 hyena, whose lives were spent in the same way ; and they were no 

 more to be praised or blamed, on moral grounds, than their less erect 

 and more hairy compatriots. 



As among these, so among primitive men, the weakest and stupid- 

 est went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who 

 were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in 

 any other sense, survived. Life was a continual free fight, and beyond 

 the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war 

 of each against all w^as the normal state of existence. The human 

 species, like others, plashed and floundered amid the general stream 

 of evolution, keeping its head above Avater as it best might, and think- 

 ing neither of whence nor whither. 



The history of civilization — that is, of society — on the other hand, 

 is the record of the attempts which the human race has made to 

 escape from this position. The first men who substituted the state of 

 mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which im- 

 pelled them to take that step, created society. But, in establishing 

 peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for existence. 

 Between the members of that society, at any rate, it was not to be 

 pursued d outrance. And of all the successive shapes which society 

 has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which the war of 

 individual against individual is most strictly limited. The primitive 

 savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever took his fancy, and 

 killed whomsocA-^er opposed him, if he coxild. On the contrary, the 

 ideal of the ethical man is to limit his freedom of action to a sphere 

 in which he does not interfere with the freedom of others ; he seeks 

 the common weal as much as his own ; and, indeed, as an essential 

 part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and means with him ; and 

 he founds his life on a more or less complete self-restraint, which is the 

 negation of the struggle for existence. He tries to escape from his 

 place in the animal kingdom, founded on the free development of the 



