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 na- 

 ture 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 re- 

 tained 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 gradually 

 eliminated. So long as any of it remained, so- 

 ciety continued to be an imperfect instrument of 

 the struggle for existence and, consequently, was 

 improvable by the selective influence of that strug- 

 gle. Other things being alike, the tribe of sav- 

 ages 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 arrest the strug- 

 gle for existence inside society, up to a certain 

 point improves the chances of society, as a corpor- 

 ate whole, in the cosmic struggle — the ethical 

 process. I have endeavoured to show that, when 

 the ethical process has advanced so far as to secure 

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



