"MANKIND IN THE MAKING" 23 



self-preservation and self-perpetuation were the only- 

 stimulants which roused his activities ; and they were also 

 the three forces, and powerful forces, which shaped his 

 love of solitude. The proximity of his fellows threatened 

 his three most vulnerable points — they competed for 

 his food, they endangered his life, and threatened the 

 possession of his family. 



This more varied and adventurous existence roused 

 new centres of activity in his brain ; he began to perceive, 

 though dimly, the possibilities of a larger life, though 

 doubtless one which would minister to his own comfort 

 rather than to that of his family — the natural and only 

 road to better things. He began to devise more expedi- 

 tious means of securing food, and circumventing his 

 enemies, among whom the most formidable was his 

 fellow-man, because in him he met his match. In the 

 course of his wanderings he had learned the use of stones 

 as weapons — which he could never have done in the 

 forests — and he had also discovered the value of his 

 family as ministers to his comfort, if only by setting 

 them to collect such food as did not require strength 

 and cunning in its capture. An inherent love of the 

 chase for the sake of the excitement which this afforded 

 probably made him nothing loth to regard hunting as his 

 own peculiar duty. A little later the advantages of 

 neighbourliness were borne in on him, largely for the sake 

 of the greater ease wherewith the animals of the chase 

 could be captured by their combined efforts ; but this 

 begat comradeship and some of the graces which follow 

 therefrom. 



Thus was laid the foundation of Society and " civiliza- 

 tion " with all its attendant barbarities. Then, as now, 

 whatever discordant notes were heard, were those struck 



