264 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. lu 



war on a grand scale into tlie hands of those commnnities in 

 which predatory activity is at the miuimuui and industrial 

 activity at the maximum. We are thus again reminded of 

 the curiously cooperating processes, partially illustrated in 

 the preceding chapter, through which warfare or destructive 

 competition, once ubiquitous, is becoming evanescent, and 

 ' giving place to a competition that is industrial or productive 

 in character. But what now more especially concerns us is 

 to look back to the earlier stages of the struggle for life 

 between communities, and to observe some of the circuru- 

 stances which must have tended to make some communities 

 prevail over others. 



The illustrations just cited show well enough the tendency 

 of the higher type of civilization to prevail, in the long run, 

 over the lower type. They are illustrations of the military 

 advantages of civilization. And Mr. Bagehot has incidentally 

 shown how thoroughly this fact disposes of the old-fashioned 

 doctrine that modern savages are the degraded descendants 

 of civilized ancestors. It was formerly assumed that, in- 

 stead of mankind having arisen out of primeval savagery, 

 modern savages have fallen from a primeval state of civili- 

 zation, having lost the arts, the morality, and the intelligence 

 which they once possessed ; and of late years some such 

 thesis as this has been overtly maintained by the Duke of 

 Argyll. Such a falling off, upon any extensive scale, is in 

 every way incompatible with the principle of natural selec- 

 tion. Take, for example, the ability to anticipate future 

 contingencies, — to abstain to-day that we may enjoy to- 

 morrow. In the next chapter it will be shown that this is 

 the most prominent symptom of the deepest of all the intel- 

 lectual differences between civilization and savagery. Now, 

 obviously, the ability to postpone present to future enjoy- 

 ment is, in a mere economic or military aspect, such an im- 

 portant acquisition to any race or group of men, that when 

 f^n/^.e acquired it could never be lost. The race possessing 



