PRELIMINARY. 231 



social evolution ; and must be prepared, if need be, to re 

 cognize their usefulness. Already we have seen that the 

 belief which prompts the savage to bury valuables with the 

 corpse and carry food to the grave, has a natural genesis ; 

 that the propitiation of plants and animals, and the &quot; worship 

 of stocks and stones,&quot; are not gratuitous absurdities ; and 

 that slaves are sacrificed at funerals in pursuance of an idea 

 which seems rational to uninstructed intelligence. Pre 

 sently we shall have to consider in what way the ghost- 

 theory has operated politically ; and if we should find reason 

 to conclude that it has been an indispensable aid to political 

 progress, we must be ready to accept the conclusion. 



Knowledge of the miseries which have for countless ages 

 been everywhere caused by the antagonisms of societies, must 

 not prevent us from recognizing the all-important part these 

 antagonisms have played in civilization. Shudder as we 

 must at the cannibalism which all over the world in early 

 clays was a sequence of war shrink as we may from the 

 thought of those immolations of prisoners which have, tens 

 of thousands of times, followed battles between wild tribes 

 read as we do with horror of the pyramids of heads and the 

 whitening bones of slain peoples left by barbarian invaders 

 hate, as we ought, the militant spirit which is even now 

 among ourselves prompting base treacheries and brutal ag 

 gressions ; we must not let our feelings blind us to the 

 proofs that inter-social conflicts have furthered the develop 

 ment of social structures. 



Moreover, dislikes to governments of certain kinds must 

 not prevent us from seeing their fitnesses to their circum 

 stances. Though, rejecting the common idea of glory, and 

 declining to join soldiers and school-boys in applying the 

 epithet &quot; great &quot; to conquering despots, we detest despotism 

 though we regard their sacrifices of their own peoples and of 

 alien peoples in pursuit of universal dominion as gigantic 

 crimes ; we must yet recognize the benefits occasionally 

 arising from the consolidations they achieve. Neither the 



