THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 87 



besian 7 war of each against all was the normal state 

 of existence. The human species, like others, plashed 

 and floundered amid the general stream of evolution, 

 keeping its head above water as it best might, and think- 

 ing neither of whence nor whither. 



The history of civilization that is, of society on 

 the other hand, is the record of the attempts which the 

 human race has made to escape from this position. The 

 first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for 

 that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled 

 them to take that step, created society. But, in establish- 

 ing peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for 

 existence. Between the members of that society, at any 

 rate, it was not to be pursued a outrance. 8 And of all 

 the successive shapes which society has taken, that most 

 nearly approaches perfection in which the war of indi- 

 vidual against individual is most strictly limited. The 

 primitive savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever 

 took his fancy, and killed whomsoever opposed him, if 

 he could. On the contrary, the ideal of the ethical man 

 is to limit his freedom of action to a sphere in which he 

 does not interfere with the freedom of others; he seeks 

 the common weal as much as his own; and, indeed, as an 

 essential part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and 

 means with him ; and he founds his life on a more or less 

 complete self-restraint, which is the negation of the 

 unlimited struggle for existence. He tries to escape from 



7 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an important political phil- 

 osopher, in his Leviathan; or the Matter, Form, and Power of 

 a Common-wealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, 1651, described the 

 state of nature as one in which complete anarchy and barbarism 

 prevailed. The only alternative he proposed was a state over 

 which the sovereign had absolute power, and in which the sub- 

 jects were bound to obedience by a "social contract" which de- 

 rived its sanction from their fear of force and hope of personal 

 advantage. 



8 "To the death." 



