ASSOCIATION 115 



was invested and taken out in war; all else perished. 

 Each nation tried constantly to be the stronger, and so 

 made or copied the best weapons; by conscious and un- 

 conscious imitation each nation formed a type of char- 

 acter suitable to war and conquest." 10 Because of this 

 continual effort to become more military the art of war 

 has constantly improved. 



If the stronger group, or nation to take the term that 

 Walter Bagehot uses, is the one that invariably survives, 

 in what does this superior strength consist? Many 

 things undoubtedly contribute to maintain the strength 

 of the group. Probably the most important advantage 

 in group struggle is unity and coherence. Galton had 

 observed years ago that the tamest cattle, those that 

 seldom ran away, that kept the flock together, and those 

 which led them homeward, would live longer than the 

 irreclaimably wild members of the flock. 20 This process 

 of selection also operated to preserve the tamest groups 

 of primitive men. The tamest were those who were uni- 

 fied by bonds of custom. "The first thing to acquire is, 

 if I may so express it, the legal fibre; a polity first 

 what sort of a polity is immaterial; a law first what 

 kind of a law is secondary; a person or set of persons 

 to pay deference to though who he is, or they are, by 

 comparison scarcely signifies." 21 What made one 

 primitive group stronger than another was a bond of 

 union. The kind of bond mattered little, for the com- 

 pact group conquered the loosely organized group. In 

 these savage struggles of early peoples the slightest ad- 

 vantage must have counted for much and often turned 



10 Bagehot, W. Physics and Politics, 2nd. ed., p. 49. 



20 British Ethnological Society's Transactions, vol. iii, p. 137. 



21 Bagehot, op. cit., p. 50. 



