214 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
other altruistic traits which promote harmonious codperation 
and social efficiency. Through its influence in moulding human 
nature man has become a social animal. Those groups in which 
sympathy, mutual helpfulness and loyalty were best developed 
would naturally prevail over others in which the purely individ- 
ualistic propensities dominated over the social impulses. Hu- 
man nature with its pugnacity, its combination of self-assertion 
and subordination, and the various herd instincts by which at 
times it is so powerfully moved has been fashioned in the stern 
school of conflict. 
Undoubtedly warfare among our primitive human ancestors 
was an institution with very different effect on the race than war 
among civilized peoples. When practically the whole tribe went 
to war the effect would more often be the preservation of the 
most vigorous and capable men in the hand to hand encounters 
which are characteristic of primitive peoples. Primitive warfare 
was more nearly on the level of the conflicts between our animal 
ancestors. Its results were probably eugenic rather than dysgenic, 
both as regards individual selection and the selection of rival 
groups. Walter Bagehot who was one of the first to emphasize 
the importance of group selection (it had been recognized by 
Darwin) remarks in his able and original work on Physics and 
Politics, “What makes one tribe . . . to differ from another is 
their relative faculty of coherence. The slightest symptom of 
legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then 
enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes win, and the 
compact tribes are the tamest. Civilization begins, because the 
beginning of civilization is a military advantage.” 
When human beings possess only a very small amount of cul- 
ture, differences in the innate endowments of rival groups must 
have frequently, if not usually, played a decisive réle in the deter- 
mination of supremacy. There can be little doubt that as man 
becomes more of a social animal he becomes more of a warlike 
animal. One of the most common results of the evolution cf 
animal societies is the increase of the instincts of pugnacity which 
are developed hand in hand with instincts for mutual support and 
