TO4 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
Man must always have been a social animal, and his most 
powerful desires in early times would be the preservation of the 
common property of the tribe, and the spoliation of neighbouring 
tribes. To accomplish this the members of a tribe must work 
together ; obedience is of the highest value, quarrelsome tribes 
could not cohere, every individual must work for the same end ; 
the tribe is an army, and a chief would be naturally selected by 
consent of the majority. No division of power could be allowed, 
the chief must not have one opinion, the priest another; the 
priest and the chief must be one.* In time the desire for private 
property would arise; this would produce custom within the 
tribe, custom would develop into law, and this again would give 
rise to the desire for individual liberty of action. But while it 
was war a /’outrance this desire must be suppressed on pain of 
extermination, for liberty of action is not compatible with 
military superiority. Under these circumstances a despotism is 
the best form of government ; variations in opinion are dangerous, 
and must be stamped out. The main virtues are courage, 
strength, and obedience; but these would nourish the moral 
qualities of truthfulness, mercy, and self-denial. As the desire 
for accumulating wealth grew stronger the rising spirit of 
industry, and consequent increasing dislike to a military life, 
would favour the formation of a standing army for the main- 
tenance of the power of the despot, and the tribe, now swollen to 
a nation, would become locked in an inflexible rule. 
But in certain favoured places, where tribes are isolated, and 
consequently where protection against other tribes was not of 
such paramount importance, the desire for personal liberty would 
increase more rapidly, despotism would be more enfeebled, or 
perhaps would never arise, and the government would be carried 
on by discussion. These naturally protected districts might be 
backward in the art of war, but they would contain the germs of 
a principle destined to overthrow despotism, and ensure the 
progress of mankind. Nations inhabiting rich, warm countries, 
which produced abundance of food, would be envied by their 
neighbours, and consequently they could never afford to give up 
despotism ; for if they did so they would certainly be conquered 
. by foreign nations whose customs they abhorred. But nations 
living in the bleak north, on land of which no one wished to 
deprive them, would develop government by discussion ; the 
struggle for life against unkindly nature would strengthen the 
body, and government by discussion would invigorate the 
intellect. In warmer climes man gets physically and mentally 
enervated, and living under a despotism he becomes intellectually 
listless. So the northern nations would be constantly breaking 
in upon the southern nations, sometimes even conquering them, 
changing perhaps under the new conditions to despotisms, and 
then themselves degenerating. On the other hand the better 
organisation for war given by despotism, and the greater popu- 
* Bagehot. 
