War a Comparatively Recent Fact 171 



labour, for as we have seen, the institution of 

 slavery could not be established until a State with 

 territorial limits had been created, which also 

 demands a very advanced state of civilization. 



Moreover, it is easy to demonstrate, not only 

 that humanity has not commenced with war, but 

 also that systematic war, war in the state of a 

 permanent institution, as it exists in our time, is a 

 comparatively recent fact. This is not because 

 of the innate goodness of earlier men. The apes 

 are not better than men, but they are not organ- 

 ized systematically and perpetually for war. This 

 is because such an organization demands high men- 

 tal faculties which they do not possess. As long as 

 man was not highly developed he could not organ- 

 ize systematic war for the same reason. Mr. 

 V. de Lapouge gives the evidence thus: 



We do not find war, nor even individual murder 

 existing among the highly developed monkeys. 

 Contrary to the opinions of certain palceontologists, 

 the instinct of crime appears to be developed in a 

 measure as our species has disengaged itself from 

 the rest of the animal kingdom. Murder, and war 

 which is assassination by wholesale, are human acts 

 and not the atavistic legacies of far distant ancestors. 

 It is with the progress of civilization that the art of 

 killing has been developed, that war has ceased to 

 have personal motives, and has become an anonymous 

 massacre of men indifferent to each other. ^ 



' Les sHections sociales, p. 209. 



