THE ISSUES OF LIFE 311 



confidently, has seemed to many to show that civilisation 

 was born out of war. Even Maine spoke of the " Universal 

 belligerency of primitive mankind ". But scientific inquiry 

 does not confirm this conclusion. In a valuable article Mr. 

 Havelock Ellis (1919) makes the following points: (1) ('hd- 

 lean man, who first used permanent and indubitably human 

 tools, may have lived about 27,000 years ago, so that our 

 ^ historical ' period does not cover a large part of our his- 

 tory. But what Palaeolithic weapons and art suggest is 

 in the main hunting not fighting. (2) If the culture of the 

 primitive Mousterians survives among the Australians, that 

 of the Aurignacians among the Bushmen, and that of the 

 Magdalenians among the Eskimo, what the study of these 

 contemporary ancestors of ours seems to show is that war, 

 apart from regulated punishment and blood-vengeance, is 

 almost unknown. 'Savages' are on the whole not warlike. 

 (3) ^' War probably began late in the history of mankind, 

 it developed slowly out of animal hunting by way of a 

 regulated attempt to secure justice as well as the gratifica- 

 tion of revenge, it was immensely stimulated by the dis- 

 coveries of the metals, and especially iron; above all, it 

 owed its expansion to two great forces, the attractive force 

 of booty and commercial gain in front, and the propulsive 

 force of a confined population with a high birth-rate be- 

 hind. . . ." " War was a result, and not a cause, of social 

 organisation." 



We think that there is a risk of exaggerating the impor- 

 tance of a high birth-rate as a factor in the evolution of 

 warfare, for primitive peoples had their own rough ways 

 of keeping a population balance. Perhaps, again, Mr. Ellis 

 underrates the importance of variation — especially social 

 variation — as a cause of war. Therefore while it is with 



