214 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



other altruistic traits which promote harmonious cooperation 

 and social efficiency. Through its influence in moulding human 

 nature man has become a social animal. Those groups in which 

 sympathy, mutual helpfulness and loyalty were best developed 

 would naturally prevail over others in which the purely individ- 

 ualistic propensities dominated over the social impulses. Hu- 

 man nature with its pugnacity, its combination of self-assertion 

 and subordination, and the various herd instincts by which at 

 times it is so powerfully moved has been fashioned in the stern 

 school of conflict. 



Undoubtedly warfare among our primitive human ancestors 

 was an institution with very different effect on the race than war 

 among civilized peoples. When practically the whole tribe went 

 to war the effect would more often be the preservation of the 

 most vigorous and capable men in the hand to hand encounters 

 which are characteristic of primitive peoples. Primitive warfare 

 was more nearly on the level of the conflicts between our animal 

 ancestors. Its results were probably eugenic rather than dysgenic, 

 both as regards individual selection and the selection of rival 

 groups. Walter Bagehot who was one of the first to emphasize 

 the importance of group selection (it had been recognized by 

 Darwin) remarks in his able and original work on Physics and 

 Politics, ''What makes one tribe ... to differ from another is 

 their relative faculty of coherence. The slightest symptom of 

 legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then 

 enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes win, and the 

 compact tribes are the tamest. Civilization begins, because the 

 beginning of civilization is a military advantage." 



When human beings possess only a very small amount of cul- 

 ture, differences in the innate endowments of rival groups must 

 have frequently, if not usually, played a decisive role in the deter- 

 mination of supremacy. There can be little doubt that as man 

 becomes more of a social animal he becomes more of a warlike 

 animal. One of the most common results of the evolution of 

 animal societies is the increase of the instincts of pugnacity which 

 are developed hand in hand with instincts for mutual support and 



