V IN HITMAN SOCIETY 203 



something apart ; and, therefore, society, Hke art, 

 is usefully to be considered as distinct from 

 nature. It is the more desirable, and even 

 necessary, to make this distinction, since society 

 differs from nature in having a definite moral 

 object ; whence it comes about that the course 

 shaped by the ethical man — the member of 

 society or citizen — necessarily runs counter to 

 that which the non-ethical man — the primitive 

 savage, or man as a mere member of the animal 

 kingdom — tends to adopt. The latter fights out 

 the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like 

 any other animal ; the former devotes his best 

 energies to the object of setting limits to the 

 struggle.^ 



In the cycle of phenomena presented by the 

 life of man, the animal, no more moral end is 

 discernible than in that presented by the lives of 

 the wolf and of the deer. However imperfect the 

 relics of prehistoric men may be, the evidence 

 which they afford clearly tends to the conclusion 

 that, for thousands and thousands of years, before 

 the origin of the oldest known civilizations, men 

 were savages of a very low type. They strove 

 with their enemies and their competitors ; they 

 preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than 

 themselves ; they were born, multiplied without 

 stint, and died, for thousands of generations, 

 alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and 



^ [The reader will observe that this is the argument of the 

 Romanes Lecture, in brief. — 1894.] 



