280 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



have not to do with one strong enemy, but with a number of 

 small tribes without any bond of union.&quot; Of the Damaras, 

 Galton says 6&amp;lt; If one werft is plundered, the adjacent ones 

 rarely rise to defend it, and thus the Namaquas have de 

 stroyed or enslaved piecemeal about one-half of the whole 

 Damara population.&quot; Similarly with the Ynca conquests in 

 Peru : &quot; there was no general opposition to their advance, 

 for each province merely defended its land without aid from 

 any other.&quot; This process, so obvious and familiar, I name 

 because it has a meaning which needs emphasizing. For we 

 here see that in the struggle for existence among societies, 

 the survival of the fittest is the survival of those in which 

 the power of military cooperation is the greatest ; and mili 

 tary cooperation is that primary kind of cooperation which 

 prepares the way for other kinds. So that this formation of 

 larger societies by the union of smaller ones in war, and this 

 destruction or absorption of the smaller un-united societies by 

 the united larger ones, is an inevitable process through which 

 the varieties of men most adapted for social life, supplant the 

 less adapted varieties. 



Eespecting the integration thus effected, it remains only to 

 remark that it necessarily follows this course necessarily 

 begins with the formation of simple groups and advances by 

 the compounding and re-compounding of them. Impulsive 

 in conduct and with rudimentary powers of concerted action, 

 savages cohere so slightly that only small bodies of them 

 can maintain their integrity. Not until such small bodies 

 have severally had their members bound to one another by 

 some slight political organization, does it become possible to 

 unite them into larger bodies; since the cohesion of these 

 implies greater fitness for concerted action, and more de 

 veloped organization for achieving it. And similarly, these 

 composite clusters must be to some extent consolidated before 

 the composition can be carried a stage further. Pass 



ing over the multitudinous illustrations occurring among the 

 uncivilized, it will suffice if I refer to tho.se given in 226, 



