I PROLEGOMENA 27 



Among mankind, on the contrary, there is no 

 such predestination to a sharply defined place in 

 the social organism. However much men may 

 differ in the quality of their intellects, the in 

 tensity of their passions, and the delicacy of their 

 sensations, it cannot be said that one is fitted by 

 his organization to be an agricultural labourer and 

 nothing else, and another to be a landowner and 

 nothing else. Moreover, with all their enormous 

 differences in natural endowment, men agree in 

 one thing, and that is their innate desire to enjoy 

 the pleasures and to escape the pains of life ; and, 

 in short, to do nothing but that which it pleases 

 them to do, without the least reference to the 

 welfare of the society into which they are born. 

 That is their inheritance (the reality at the bottom 

 of the doctrine of original sin) from the long series 

 of ancestors, human and semi-human and brutal, 

 in whom the strength of this innate tendency to 

 self-assertion was the condition of victory in the 

 struggle for existence. That is the reason of the 

 aviditas vitce l the insatiable hunger for enjoy 

 ment of all mankind, which is one of the essen 

 tial conditions of success in the war with the state 

 of nature outside ; and yet the sure agent of the 

 destruction of society if allowed free play within. 



The check upon this free play of self-assertion, 

 or natural liberty, which is the necessary condition 

 for the origin of human society, is the product 

 1 See below. Romanes Lecture, note 7. 



