I PROLEGOMENA 35 



have adduced other grounds for arriving at the 

 same conclusion. 



I have pointed out that human society took its 

 rise in the organic necessities expressed by imita- 

 tion and by the sympathetic emotions ; and that, 

 in the struggle for existence with the state of 

 nature and with other societies, as part of it, those 

 in which men were thus led to close co-operation 

 had a great advantage.^ But, since each man 

 retained more or less of the faculties common to 

 all the rest, and especially a full share of the 

 desire for unlimited self-gratification, the struggle 

 for existence within society could only be gradu- 

 ally eliminated. So long as any of it remained, 

 society continued to be an imperfect instrument 

 of the struggle for existence and, consequently, 

 was improvable by the selective influence of that 

 struggle. Other things being alike, the tribe of 

 savages in which order was best maintained ; in 

 which there was most security within the tribe 

 and the most loyal mutual support outside it, 

 would be the survivors. 



I have termed this gradual strengthening of 

 the social bond, which, though it arrests the 

 struggle for existence inside society, up to a 

 certain point improves the chances of society, as 

 a corporate whole, in the cosmic struggle — the 

 ethical process. I have endeavoured to show 

 that, when the ethical process has advanced so 

 ^ Collected Essays, vol. v., Prologue, p. 52. 



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