HISTORICAL CYCLES — CEAWFORD 453 



For countless ages man remained a solitary tool-using hunter. 

 He improved his tools and evolved physically as an animal, from the 

 stage represented by the Piltdown skull to that of the later cave 

 dwellers where, physically, he still remains." Then, somewhere 

 about 5000 B. C, when the Ice Age was practically over, he began 

 a new chapter by discovering agriculture and the domestication of 

 animals, and by ceasing to be a wanderer. That was the second 

 epoch-making discovery of human history, for it made sedentary 

 life in communities possible. Some freedom of movement was tem- 

 porarily sacrificed for the innumerable compensations received in 

 exchange. We are still living in this chapter. 



The essence of this new integration of human society is surely 

 that it is, to a far greater extent than the first, a self-conscious unit. 

 The degree of self -consciousness in a community may be relativel}'^ 

 greater or smaller, but it is invariably present in some measure. 

 By some it is nowadays called patriotism, by others group conscious- 

 ness. Patriotism in the last resort is merely the mutual offensive 

 action and reaction of communities ; it could not exist without an in- 

 herent potentiality of conflict. This new self-conscious unit has come 

 into existence through the amalgamation of hitherto separate indi- 

 viduals. It is a new manifestation. It stands in the same relation 

 to the individuals which compose it as does the whole body of an 

 animal to the cells of its body. It has in fact evolved in much the 

 same way. Why has it done so? Surely because, being a form of 

 life, it obeys the laws of development of all living things and 

 recapitulates. It is even possible to be more precise. If this is 

 recapitulation, it should be of much shorter duration than that which 

 is recapitulated. We do not, unfortunately, know how many years 

 it took to evolve the first multicellular organism from the first cell, 

 but we can not err in reckoning it in hundreds of millions of years.^^ 

 From the invention of tools to the first city state can not have been 

 more than a few hmidreds of thousands of years at the outside, for 

 man himself is not much older. 



It next becomes necessary to determine, if we can, to what bio- 

 logical stage or stages belong the civilized communities of historic 

 times. To do so we must examine the characteristics of a civilized 

 community. 



It is primarily a self-conscious unit acting as a single whole. This 

 implies a single directing brain or seat of consciousness which can 

 compel such action or reh'' upon its performance. " The simplest 

 rudimentary^ conception of political action is this, that one man 



1^ For an elaboration of this argument, see my Man and His Past (Oxford, 1921), 

 especially the first two chapters. 



12 See The Science of Life, hy H. G. Wells, J. S. Huxley, and G. P. Wells, vol. 1, p. 207 

 (table of geological formations with approximate relative lengths and duration in years). 



