638 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



its civilization and its fighting arts from the west; its people 

 were physically smaller and mentally had not produced many 

 recognized great minds. But the individuals of the nation 

 were animated by a common sympathetic aim, they unitedly 

 proenvironed a course which all were prepared to work out; 

 the successful Count and the Samurai as well as the poorer 

 peasants were fed, clothed, and cared for at each step in the 

 campaign. In contrast to this the Russian army consisted 

 of "successful" leaders in their generals, admirals, and com- 

 manders, who had faitlifully imitated the brutish Peter the 

 Great in use of the knout, the prison, the mines, the frozen 

 fields of Siberia, for their "subjects," their less successful ones, 

 when these proenvironed a nobler and sweeter national life. 

 So, when the "successful" ones led the battle by sea or land, 

 those who were not despatched by Japanese bullets in front 

 fell by the bullets of their "subjects" behind. 



History has often witnessed this biological procession of 

 events in the past, and doubtless will also in the future, till 

 each nation learns that every healthy member of it represents 

 an asset that deserves highest consideration. 



Such a phase of human natural history, often spoken of 

 under the narrower and frequently misleading names of na- 

 tional politics, economic problems, party prejudices, local 

 sympathies or antipathies, introduces us to the second and 

 even more striking, though more complicated study, namely, 

 proenvironal reaction in social human life. 



As accepted and dilated on by McLennan, Lubbock, and 

 others, primitive man, like most of the anthropoid apes, showed 

 social as well as family tendencies and habits. So abundant 

 fruit crops, or vegetable supplies, or animals caught in the 

 chase, were a source of common rejoicing and were eaten in 

 common, even though in separate family huts. Conversely 

 times of scarcity caused each little community to feel the 

 greater need for wise planning in the future, so that there 

 might V)e food reserves for the days of scarcity. 



Even when the stage had been reached where man became 

 a settled agriculturist, it was possible for each individual or 



