FROM THE EVOLUTION PHILOSOPHY. 21 



unqualified hostility towards one another, or of qualified 

 hostility, or they must dwell together on terms of undis- 

 turbed peace. The earliest states of aggregate life may be 

 characterized as preponderantly militant. To-day we have 

 arrived at the predominantly peaceful stage and are 

 moving 011 to the age of complete peace. Nor will social 

 evolution have reached its final limit with the total disap- 

 pearance of open aggression. Evidently the completely 

 peaceful stage of corporate existence cannot claim to 

 represent a perfectly evolved state until, in addition to the 

 cessation of open hostility, there also prevails among men 

 perfect justice and perfect beneficence. Or, to express the 

 idea more properly, as taking into account the highest 

 possible point of individual as well as corporate develop- 

 ment, the perfectly evolved social state must be one in 

 which human conduct has simultaneously reached its 

 physical, biological, psychological, and sociological evolu- 

 tionary limit. Let us say, then, for the sake of clearness, 

 without meaning in any way to insist too strictly on our 

 classification, that there are four states of associated life : 

 the warlike, the predominantly peaceful, the completely 

 peaceful, and the perfectly evolved, or what we shall here- 

 after call the ideal. Now arises the question, Which of 

 these four states of corporate life is the best ? But 

 manifestly this problem admits of no solution until we 

 agree on the meaning of the word " best." For if it be 

 said that every one's ambition ought to be to perfect him- 

 self in the art of murder, then there is no good reason 

 save perhaps the difficulty of finding sufficient material on 

 which to practise the art, in the presence of so many 

 equally skilful brother-assassins there is no good reason, 

 we say, why the warlike state should not be pronounced the 

 best. But clearly no such meaning is implied by the term. 



