246 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



Man to struggle for life — is two-fold. The first 

 is inorganic nature, including heat and cold, climate 

 and weather, earth, air, water — the material world. 

 The second is the world of life, comprehending all 

 plants and animals, and especially those animals 

 against whom primitive Man has always to struggle 

 most — other primitive Men. All that Man is, all 

 the arts of life, all the gifts of civilization, all the 

 happiness and joy and progress of the world, owe 

 much of their existence to that double war. 



Follow it a little further. Go back to a time 

 when Man was just emerging from the purely animal 

 state, when he was in the condition described by 

 Mr. Darwin, "a tailed quadruped probably arboreal 

 in its habits," and when in his glimmering con- 

 sciousness mind was feeling about for its first uses 

 in snatching some novel success in the Struggle 

 for Life. This hypothetical creature, so far as 

 bodily structure was concerned, was presumably 

 not very vigorous. Had he been more vigorous 

 he might never have evolved at all ; as it was, 

 he fled for refuge not to his body but to a 

 stratagem of the Mind When threatened by a 

 comrade, or pressed by an alien-species, he called 

 in a simple foreign aid to help him in the 

 Struggle — the branch of a tree. Whether the 

 discovery was an accident ; whether the idea was 



