INTRODUCTORY. 331 



the right to feed their flocks over. This we can scarcely 

 doubt after learning from the ancient books of the East that 

 this cause initiated chronic wars. 



Evidently, then, the resistances to be encountered in the 

 transition from the hunting life to higher forms of life were 

 many and great, and doubtless caused innumerable failures. 

 Nature shows us that many seeds are produced that a few 

 may germinate, and that of those which germinate only 

 some survive to maturity. With types of society the like 

 has happened. We may safely conclude that those types 

 out of which civilized societies came, established themselves 

 only after countless abortive attempts. 



725. Like other kinds of progress, social progress is not 

 linear but divergent and re-divergent. Each differentiated 

 product gives origin to a new set of differentiated products. 

 While spreading over the Earth mankind have found en 

 vironments of various characters, and in each case the social 

 life fallen into, partly determined by the social life pre 

 viously led, has been partly determined by the influences of 

 the new environment; so that the multiplying groups have 

 tended ever to acquire differences, now major and now 

 minor: there have arisen genera and species of societies. 



Such low peoples as the Fuegians, Tasmanians, Austra 

 lians, and Andaman Islanders, subsist exclusively on wild 

 food, gathered or caught ; and among the Fuegians and the 

 Eskimo, no other food can be procured. Elsewhere, as in 

 Australia, sustenance on tame animals and their products, is 

 negatived by the absence of kinds fit for domestication. 

 And these inferior varieties of hunters show us no rudiments 

 of agriculture. It is otherwise with the superior hunting 

 tribes of North America. While some live exclusively on 

 game, roots, and fruits, others have partially passed from the 

 hunting life into the agricultural life. The Dakotas in 

 general are hunters only; but one division of them, the 

 Mdewakantonwans, began, nearly a century since (appar- 



