170 SAVAGE SUBVIVALS 



out that might is not necessarily right. We are 

 learning that it is better to co-operate than to go 

 on wasting our energies fighting each other. We 

 believe it is better to make a treaty of agreement, 

 by which each is allowed a fair share of the enjoy- 

 ments and privileges of the world, than it is for 

 each to continue to try to have his way and to get 

 everything for himself. And the Golden Rule — 

 Act toward others as you would act toward a part 

 of yourself — represents this Great Treaty of 

 Peace which the most nearly civilized men are in 

 the act of agreeing to. 



The over-regard for ourselves, which we find in 

 our natures, is, therefore, another survival from 

 the dark ages of savagery and animality out of 

 which we higher peoples have come. We higher 

 peoples are trying to live lives of peace and co- 

 operation, but we find it very hard to do so and 

 we are at best only partially successful, because 

 we have left in us so much of the machinery of 

 savages and beasts. 



6. Other Vestigial Instincts. 



There is one thing that should be very vividly 

 realized in order to understand why it is that 

 there are so many instincts left over from the 

 savage that are not needed by us higher peoples — 

 in other words, in order to understand why it is 

 that there are so many things that were natural 

 and proper for the savage to do that are regarded 

 by us higher peoples as wrong. 



