Biological Point of View ii 



importance. Out of the demand for a means 

 of enforcing the interests of the group arose 

 in part the fictions of primitive religions, which 

 admirably served the purpose of restraining 

 the quarrelsome and the wayward by fear of 

 spirit agencies and by posthumous rewards and 

 punishments. 



The transition from the simple tribal so- 

 ciety of kinship groups to the larger civil 

 society of complex class organization is cited 

 as a typical example of the unmoral methods 

 of nature. Faced with the necessity for larger 

 organization, man's feeble intellect was wholly 

 inadequate to the demands that new conditions 

 imposed. Consequently the more complex so- 

 ciety was attained only through the play of the 

 most brutal instincts. At the time of the tran- 

 sition the arts of living had materially devel- 

 oped, the soil was by some tribes successfully 

 cultivated, and wealth was being accumulated 

 in the form of herds and flocks. Following 

 nature's pathway of the most successful aggres- 

 sion, the horsemen herding their cattle discov- 

 ered the short cut to prosperity that lay in 

 attacking their neighbors. The conditions in- 

 viting such attacks were, of course, the rapidity 

 of movement acquired through horsemanship. 



