CH. XX.] CONDITIONS OF PBOGBESS. 259. 



what less rigorous, its effects upon rival or antagonist societies 

 are in nowise diminished in their beneficent severity. The 

 attributes which tend to make a society strong and durable 

 with reference to surrounding societies, are the attributes 

 wliich natural selection will chiefly preserve. As Mr. Wal- 

 lace has pointed out : " Capacity for acting in concert for 

 protection, and for the acquisition of food and shelter ; sym- 

 pathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other ; the 

 sense of right, which checks depredations upon our fellows ; 

 . . . self-restraint in present appetites ; and that intelligent 

 foresight which prepares for the future, are all qualities that 

 from their earliest appearance must have been for the benefit 

 of each community, and would therefore have become the 

 subjects of natural selection. Tribes in which such mental 

 and moral qualities were predominant, would have an ad- 

 vantage in the struggle for existence over other tribes in 

 which they were less developed, and would live and main- 

 tain their numbers, while the others would decrease and 

 finally succumb." ^ 



The most conspicuous result of this unceasing operation 

 of natural selection upon rival communities, has been the 

 continuous increase of the aggregate military strength of 

 the human race, and the more and more complete segre- 

 gation of this military strength into those portions of the 

 race which are most civilized. As Mr. Bagehot has ably 

 shown,^ however broken or discontinuous the progressive 

 career of the European family of nations may seem to have 

 been in other respects, there can hardly be a doubt that 

 the increase of their aggregate military force has been un- 

 interrupted. There can hardly be a doubt that the total 

 fighting power of the Mediterranean communities was greater 



* Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 312. 



* See his PJiysics and Politics, London, 1872, — a little book so excellent 

 botli in thought aud in exiJiession that one cannot but wish there were much 

 muie of it. 



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