CH. XIX.] ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS, 249 



a point wliicli Comte clearly saw, and has 'brilliantly 

 illustrated. 



Thus we see how the exigencies of self-protection entailed 

 by the primitive state of universal warfare furnished of 

 themselves the conditions for the rise of industry. We need 

 not trace in detail the slow growth of the industrial spirit 

 at the expense of the military spirit in the ancient civic 

 communities, in the ancient and medieval Empire, and in 

 modern times. That has been done, with a masterly hand, 

 by Comte. "We may only note briefly liow industry — the 

 offspring of slavery, itself the offspring of warfare — has all 

 along, by aiding the differentiation and integration of society, 

 been draining the vitality out of its primeval parent. Let 

 us note, then, that the kind of differentiation, known as 

 " division of labour," by rendering the various portions of 

 the community more and more dependent on each other, 

 renders a state of warfare ever less easy to sustain, and 

 therefore continually, though slowly, diminishes the frequency 

 and shortens the continuance of wars. The statement that 

 in early times a community is, on the whole, better able to 

 endure protracted warfare than in later times, may be illus- 

 trated by a comparison between the Punic Wars of Eome 

 and the War of Secession in our own country. The horrible 

 destruction of life and property occasioned by the first and 

 second Punic wars is minutely described in jMommsen'a 

 "Eoman History." The first of these desperate struggles 

 lasted twenty-three years, during the five severest of which 

 the census of Pioman patricians was diminished by one-sixth 

 of the whole number, — a fact terrible to contemplate when its 

 full significance is realized. After twenty-three years of com- 

 parative quiet began the still more deadly struggle against 

 Hannibal, which lasted seventeen years. During this war, the 

 total loss of life in all the communities engaged — Italian, 

 Spanish, Sicilian, and African — cannot be estimated at less 

 than 600,000 persons actually slain j a loss which I bolieve 



