T IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 203 



is usefully to be considered as distinct from na- 

 ture. It is the more desirable, and even neces- 

 sary, 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 ex- 

 istence 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 along- 

 side the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the 

 hyaena, whose lives were spent in the same way; 



* [The reader will observe that this is the argument 

 of the Romanes Lecture, in brief. — 1894.] 



