1 66 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



validity and generality of the rule that the higher 

 brutes below man depend for the preservation of life 

 and the satisfaction of desires, and therefore for 

 individual and type survival, on their natural adap- 

 tations, firstly, to their inanimate environment; 

 and secondly, to the struggle with living competi- 

 tors. 



It is significant that this rule applies also to 

 persons dominated by the false human race charac- 

 teristics. Ruthless egoism cannot produce the 

 supplies and opportunities upon which the life and 

 happiness of civilized human beings depend. It 

 can only appropriate them after persons of the true 

 type have produced them. Persons of the false 

 type are not above sub-human brutes in character, 

 only in intellectual power. Intellectual power, like 

 other modes of force or energy, can be used for high 

 ideals and for low self -gratifications. It marks a 

 difference in degree, not in kind. 



To return to the main argument : Since instincts 

 come into existence very slowly through coincidences 

 in variation, and are then still more slowly selected, 

 only if the conditions under which they favor survival 

 continue during many generations, therefore could 

 they never be the equivalents of the infinitely greater 

 potentialities of purposeful industry and voluntary co- 

 operation, even though these had forever remained at 

 those lowest terms which prevailed before moral 

 aims began to supply the motive power and scientific 

 foresight the guiding principle. 



