338 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



as having been met by many and great obstacles, and as 

 having increased its rate when it surmounted one after 

 another of these : the power of dealing with Nature having 

 step by step increased while the resistances offered by Nature 

 have step by step decreased. 



But nothing like a complete conception of the impedi 

 ments which it has taken many thousands of years to over 

 come, can be formed until we have observed those* arising 

 from human nature itself. The original traits of this were 

 in various ways adverse to improvement. Chronic war 

 which characterizes hunting tribes (originally prompted by 

 increase of numbers and consequent lack of food) hinders 

 the settled industrial life. It does this by drafting off 

 men from peaceful pursuits; by generating a contempt 

 for all occupations but that of fighting and a pride in 

 robbing; and by entailing frequent destructions of settle 

 ments and losses of produce. Thus Barrow states that the 

 Kaffirs were sometimes compelled, on account of war, to 

 suspend agricultural operations for several years. The 

 primitive Greeks, who took their arms with them to the 

 fields, must have been much discouraged from farming by 

 the raids which the tribes made on one another. Of the 

 legendary period Grote writes 



&quot; The celebrity of Autolykus, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, 

 in the career of wholesale robbery and perjury, and the wealth which 

 it enabled him to acquire, are described [in the Homeric poems] 

 with the same unaffected admiration as the wisdom of Nestor or 

 the strength of Ajax . . . Abduction of cattle, and expeditions foi un 

 provoked ravage as well as for retaliation, between neighbouring tribes, 

 appear ordinary phenomena.&quot; 



Clearly, while the predatory instincts are predominant, they 

 stand in the way of those habits which initiate a higher 

 social state. 



The mental and bodily constitution fitted to a wild life, 

 can be re-moulded to fit a settled life only by slow steps. 

 Desires which find satisfaction in the chase, in adventures, 

 in wandering, not dead even in ourselves, are so strong in the 



