FUTURE DESTINY OF THE RACE 87 



victory of one tribe over another, and if this victory has been 

 mainly dependent on two factors tribal morality and inventive 

 capacity it becomes a vital question to us all to see how far 

 these necessary factors are embodied in our own tribe, and 

 what consequently is the outlook for its continued success. 



We have seen that the two elements in tribal morality 

 are faithfulness to the tribesmen and loyalty to the leader. 

 But these virtues demand for their healthy development that 

 the tribesmen and leader should know and trust each other. 

 As all are aware, however, for the last eight thousand years 

 there has been a constant tendency to amalgamate tribes into 

 larger wholes, and so to form kingdoms and empires. The 

 mutual knowledge demanded for tribal loyalty tends to be diluted 

 in this process, and so the tie of affection is correspondingly 

 weakened. Many sijch combinations have resisted the dis- 

 integrating forces for a time and then gone down before the 

 assault of tribes in whom the tribal loyalty was strong and 

 vigorous. Thus did the Koman Empire fall before the attacks 

 of Northern tribes ; and the feudal system which succeeded it 

 is only tribalism under another name. 



The British army is founded on the tribal spirit. It is 

 called the regimental spirit ; but that is only another name for 

 the same thing. The regiment primarily not the fatherland 

 is what the soldier lives and dies for. But the army forms 

 only a small proportion of the millions who make up the 

 amalgamation known as the British Empire, and the danger of 

 putting power in the hands of thousands who render no corre- 

 sponding service for the privilege is one which is constantly 

 overlooked by politicians but it is a mistake which will one 

 day have to be paid for. 



The difficulty is to combine the intense loyalty shown by 

 the members of a regiment to one another with the enormous 

 extent of modern kingdoms. This difficulty was in former 

 days overcome by religion. The biological function of religion 

 has always been to uphold the sense of duty, without which 

 the tribe perishes. The original form of religious belief is the 

 continual spiritual presence of a dead leader who watches 

 over the tribe, to whom all must be loyal. Primitive 

 Christianity was a belief of this kind, and on it our modern 

 civilisation is built. In modern times, however, it is 



