Competitive System Amongst Lower Animals 757 



individualism of cruelest most merciless tendency, in midst 

 of a progressive social and national organization that has 

 yielded highly beneficent results. We may now review the 

 main lines of development which this competitive system has 

 given rise to. 



We have already seen that, in the religious aspirations and 

 evolution of mankind, there soon appeared, alongside those 

 who earnestly strove to elevate the race, others whose main 

 or whole desire was to reach place, pelf, pomp, or power — 

 not unfrequently all four combined — and who were prepared 

 to degrade the religious sentiment and aspirations so that 

 they might fulfill selfish ambitions. 



Equally true has it been in social, political, and religious 

 life. Mankind willingly recognizes, welcomes, praises, and 

 looks up to those who subdue nature and the forces of nature. 

 Wliile some of these have proved its real benefactors and have 

 been honored as such — like the Euclids, the Archimedes, the 

 Aristotles, the W^atts, the Stephensons, and the Marconis — ■ 

 others — and a sadly large number — have proenvironed and 

 worked out selfish careers in which the synthesis, the upbuild- 

 ing of mankind along ever higher planes have been almost 

 or wholly unheeded ambitions. Rather gaining added power, 

 they have become unscrupulous tyrants, wholesale butchers, 

 deceitful schemers, traitorous aspirants over the rights of 

 others. So have originated the politicians who have gambled 

 with human happiness; the diplomats who have overreached 

 neighbors, tribes, or nations, and sown seeds of lasting discord 

 that the sword too often has extended; the captains, marshals, 

 and generals who became wholesale cannibals, except that 

 often after slaying victims they mayhap left their victims 

 to rot instead of economically devouring them; the princes 

 and kings who eventually became so impious and desecrating 

 toward the human race or sections of it that they claimed 

 forsooth "the divine right of kings," in order that they might 

 continue their unhallowed ways. 



For long millennia man in struggling upward has constantly 

 proenvironed plans for delivery from such analytic and preda- 



