NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 27 



expanded that unconscious protective attitude towards his 

 immature offspring which natural selection had already 

 favoured and established in the animal race, into a 

 conscious and larger love for his tribe, his race, his 

 nationality, and his kind. He has developed speech, 

 the power of communicating, and above all of record- 

 ing and handing on from generation to generation his 

 thought and knowledge. He has formed communi- 

 ties, built cities, and set up empires. At every step of 

 his progress man has receded further and further from 

 the ancient rule exercised by Nature. He has advanced 

 so far and become so unfitted to the earlier rule, that 

 to suppose that Man can 'return to Nature' is as un- 

 reasonable as to suppose that an adult animal can return 

 to its mother's womb. 



In early tribal times natural selection still imposed 

 the death penalty on failure. The stronger, the more 

 cunning, the better armed, the more courageous tribe or 

 family group, exterminated by actual slaughter or starva- 

 tion the neighbouring tribes less gifted in one or all of 

 these qualities. But from what we know of the history 

 of warlike exterminating savage tribes at the present day 

 as, for instance, the Masai of East Africa it seems 

 unlikely that the method of extermination that is, of 

 true natural selection had much effect in man's develop- 

 ment after the very earliest period. Union and absorption 

 were more usual results of the contact of primitive tribes 

 than struggles to the death. The expulsion of one group 

 by another from a desired territory was more usual than 

 the destruction of the conquered. In spite of the fre- 

 quent assertions to the contrary, it seems that neither 

 the more ancient wars of mankind for conquest and 

 migration nor the present and future wars for commercial 

 privilege have any real equivalence to the simple removal 



