INTRODUCTION 



for the first time acquire not only vaguely gre- 

 garious habits, but a tendency to live in defi- 

 nite social relations with his kind, and begin to 

 nourish the sympathetic impulses upon which 

 the later moral consciousness is based. When 

 Fiske wrote this chapter, efforts had already 

 been made by evolutionists to suggest some- 

 thing towards a solution of this problem. Fiske 

 mentions some of these efforts. That the weak- 

 nesses of primitive man should make sociality 

 advantageous had been already suggested by 

 Darwin. But since the very explanation of 

 the origin of this physical weakness of man de- 

 pended, as we have seen, upon the hypothesis 

 that natural selection had preferred skill of 

 brain to strength of body (because, as Fiske 

 states, " the superior sagacity even of the lowest 

 savage makes him quite a formidable antagonist 

 to animals much more powerful than himself"), 

 it seems inexplicable that this very quality which 

 had been selected because it was associated with 

 sagacity, and was accordingly an advantage, 

 should prove so disadvantageous as to need the 

 development of a new tendency to make its 

 own presence supportable. Fiske sees this diffi- 

 culty. He also sees that primitive man was not 

 a mild creature, who resorted to the social life 

 because of the gentleness so often associated 

 with weakness. Our author accordingly holds 

 Ixxx 



