S7 
 
 BERKELOUW 
 00KOEALER8
 
 SI 
 
 ERKELOUW 
 3KDEALER8
 
 MODERN MAN 
 AND HIS FORERUNNERS
 
 MODERN MAN AND 
 HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 A SHORT STUDY OF THE 
 HUMAN SPECIES LIVING AND EXTINCT 
 
 BY 
 
 H. G. F. SPURRELL 
 
 M.A., M.B. B.Ch. OxON. 
 F.Z.S. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL AND SONS LTD. 
 
 1917
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF MY UNCLE 
 F. C. J. SPURRELL 
 
 IN WHOM 
 THERE PASSED AWAY 
 
 ON 
 FEBRUARY 25TH, 1915 
 
 ONE OF THE LAST OF THAT LITTLE 
 GROUP OF MEN WHOSE LABOURS 
 DURING THE LATER DECADES OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY ESTABLISHED 
 THE GREAT ANTIQUITY OF MAN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN offering this book at the present time it is per- 
 haps advisable to say that it has not been inspired 
 by recent events. I had had the project in mind 
 for more than fifteen years ; and the accumulated notes 
 began to take their present form in the summer of 19 12. 
 When war broke out at the beginning of August 
 1 9 14 the much-revised manuscript of the first six 
 chapters had already been typed. The seventh chapter 
 was written and the book finished during the next 
 seven weeks on the lines originally laid down. The 
 typescript was then laid aside for fifteen months. 
 Revising it, after this interval, I have not avoided 
 reference to recent events ; but I have made no en- 
 deavour to rewrite the book as a * war-book.' 
 
 The delay has had one result that might not have 
 been expected. I had chosen a number of illustrations 
 wherewith to justify my references to the perfection of 
 palaeolithic art. These I am now able to omit, so 
 numerous are the books and new editions of books 
 dealing with prehistoric man which have appeared 
 during the interval. Information which was not very 
 easily accessible then has since been made available in 
 
 convenient form. 
 
 H. G. F. S. 
 
 August 19 16.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Problems of Anthropology 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 II. The Zoological Position of Man . . .7 
 
 III. Extinct Species and Races of Man and their Culture 43 
 
 IV. The Growth of Human Power and Numbers during 
 
 THE Neolithic Age . . . . • 57 
 
 V. The Origins of Civilization 
 VI. The Growth and Spread of Civilization 
 VII. Man at the Present Day 
 
 Postscript .... 
 Conclusion .... 
 
 Index ..... 
 
 82 
 109 
 130 
 181 
 185 
 191
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATE FACING PAGE 
 
 I. Lemur Types : Galago, Indiis. American Monkeys : 
 
 Spider Monkey, Squirrel Monkey . . .14 
 
 II. Types of Gibbons: Siamang, Hoolock. Types of Great 
 
 Apes: Gorilla, Chimpanzee . . . .16 
 
 III. Baboons . . . . . . .34 
 
 IV. Types of Living Races : Black, White, Yellow . . 38 
 V. Early Skull-Types of the Human Group . . 44 
 
 Map — Primary Foci of Civilization . . page 103
 
 The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, 
 detract somewhat from its interest ; but if it be 
 judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact 
 knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of 
 the future, which in the course of human things must 
 resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. 
 
 THUCYDIDES.
 
 MODERN MAN 
 AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 
 
 There has of recent years been a great accumulation of new know- 
 ledge, in the light of which accepted views regarding man require 
 re-examination. 
 
 Palasontologists have brought forward fresh facts bearing on the 
 antiquity and varieties of the human species. 
 
 The lost culture of prehistoric races has been discovered. 
 
 Views regarding the extent of civilization both in time and space 
 have had to be revised. 
 
 Evidence of the diversity of modern populations has accumulated. 
 
 Recent advances in general biological science are found to have an 
 important bearing on human problems. 
 
 Knowledge is daily extending, and an attempt to compile a summary 
 of modern anthropology can only be tentative and of transient interest. 
 
 EACH generation has its own view of life, and 
 no doubt every generation has beHeved its 
 own problems to be peculiarly difficult. Yet 
 the problem that humanity presents to humanity in our 
 own day undeniably has aspects which did not trouble 
 our predecessors. We have to-day more information 
 regarding man than has ever been brought together 
 before, and our view of the history of mankind is now 
 so comprehensive, both as regards time and space, that
 
 2 THE PROBLEMS OF 
 
 generalizations, which formerly appeared sound because 
 locally formed and locally applied, have had to be dis- 
 carded. The result is for the moment bewilderment. 
 
 Within the last few years several things have happened 
 to unsettle the ideas which until recently have been 
 considered established. 
 
 Firstly, the careful excavation of human remains 
 has proved, in the light of modern knowledge of geology 
 and biology, that man of the type existing to-day has 
 undergone very little change during a period of some 
 two hundred thousand years. When he has been traced 
 back this distance in time he is found to be living side 
 by side with another species of man, every bit as human, 
 every bit as advanced in development, but structurally 
 as different from modern man as the gorilla from the 
 chimpanzee. This species, now extinct, was regarded 
 until recently as the less specialized ancestral type from 
 which modern man had been evolved. The evolu- 
 tionist now realizes that both forms are finished products, 
 the terminal twigs of a yet older branch of the same 
 stem which gave rise to the monkeys and apes. They 
 are indeed the survivors of a group of manlike forms 
 of which few, but very significant relics, have been 
 recovered. 
 
 This revolution in our views of the antiquity of man 
 and his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom 
 is almost eclipsed in its interest by the revelation that 
 a culture, whose artistic products were perfect in their 
 kind and imply minds as capable of conceiving and 
 carrying out ideas as our own, existed prior to the last 
 ice age. The races which painted and carved with such 
 accuracy and taste have been extinct for tens of thousands 
 of years, and their culture died with them. Other races 
 which survived them made an independent start later.
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY 3 
 
 After our ideas of the distribution of man, both in 
 time and space, had been thus widely extended, and we 
 had been called upon to revise our conception of the 
 range within which are displayed manifestations of high 
 mental powers, we were next compelled, by accumulated 
 results of historical research, to form a much more modest 
 estimate of the place of civilization in the scheme of 
 human progress than we had done hitherto. Though 
 man has inhabited the earth for hundreds of thousands 
 of years, it is barely ten thousand years since civilization 
 arose. By civilization we mean, not merely any display 
 of human intelligence from the chipping of a flint to 
 the painting of a rock ; but the organization of life so 
 that the resources of a given tract of land could be 
 developed sufficiently to maintain a dense population. 
 Where remains of cities, roads, canals, mines, irrigation 
 works, or drainage on a large scale, point to a dense 
 population with a complex regulation of its activities, 
 we say we have evidence of civilization. Civilization, 
 apart from the refinement of existence which it fosters, 
 implies an exploitation of the land, a mode of life 
 essentially different from that of uncivilized men and 
 animals who live simply in numbers restricted by the 
 limitations of what the land of itself produces. 
 
 If the geologist and the anthropologist have been 
 compelling us to reconsider our views, the historian 
 has been advancing no less important claims within 
 the confines of his own domain. In the first place, he 
 has extended his range in time. Beneath our own 
 civilization whose continuous growth we once thought 
 comprised the whole extent of organized activity, he 
 has found other civilizations going back ultimately to 
 a far more remote origin in neolithic savagery. In 
 the second place, he has extended his range in space.
 
 4 THE PROBLEMS OF 
 
 He has unravelled for us the story of great civilizations 
 in Asia and America, the work of races widely different 
 from our own, but capable of achievements as magnificent 
 and as durable as any that have been seen in Europe. 
 In the third place, he has asked us to modify our recent 
 belief that civilization is a progressive phenomenon, 
 by giving us unmistakable proof that it has in the past 
 been intermittent ; yet that at corresponding phases 
 in its successive cycles it was comparatively uniform in 
 the perfection with which it devised means to meet needs. 
 All these discoveries of man's immediate and more 
 distant past would by themselves have thrown a severe 
 strain upon our capacity for mental readjustment ; 
 but they are no more than a part of the new material 
 out of which man has been trying to construct a coherent 
 theory of himself during the past few years. The 
 systematic study of living races and communities has 
 brought to light another mass of facts with which 
 man's idea of man must be harmonized. The belief 
 died hard that the modern European was the archetype 
 of man to which all people all over the world should 
 and easily could be induced to conform. However, 
 closer intercourse with the great civilized nations of 
 the East; the extravagances of European emigrants in 
 new continents where they have had to adapt themselves 
 to a strange environment ; the studies pursued by ex- 
 plorers ; and, above all, the experiences of those officials 
 sent out by Europe to govern backward races, have, 
 when correlated, led to a knowledge of the natural 
 history of man which killed the belief in his uniformity 
 beyond all possibility of resuscitation. In spite of a 
 common origin and an underlying anatomical uni- 
 formity the branches of the human race to-day are 
 separated by peculiarities developed, in far distant parts
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY 5 
 
 of the world, to adapt them to peculiar conditions. 
 These deep-seated differences appear not so much in 
 external physique as in various ways of reacting to 
 climate, fatigue, and specific diseases, in achievements 
 of culture unlike in kind and extent, and in institutions 
 and points of view, unadaptable, and incomprehensible 
 to strangers. 
 
 Even those not directly engaged in studying the 
 human animal have helped to shake old beliefs, and 
 have amassed fresh facts for which a place must be 
 found in the new scheme if it is to be complete and 
 durable. For instance, the slowly accumulating know- 
 ledge of the principles which underlie heredity has 
 helped to explain much that was obscure in the vicissi- 
 tudes of the human species. We now regard the 
 individual as made up by a grouping of positive and 
 negative characters derived from amongst those of a 
 very mixed ancestry, and believe that he cannot during 
 life acquire new characters that he is able to transmit 
 to his offspring. This has taught us that those marked 
 mental and physiological differences which are apparent 
 in populations of the great nations to-day are to be 
 explained by the inextricable mixture of races out of 
 which they have arisen. Education and environment 
 will affect the development of the individual who comes 
 directly under their influence, but will only modify 
 the race in so far as they aid or hinder particular types 
 in contributing to the next generation. 
 
 The attempt to compile an account of man out of 
 this bewildering bulk of new material, constitutes a 
 task formidable in its difficulty and yet of absorbing 
 interest. It necessitates generalizing from an appalling 
 mass of detail in every branch of knowledge, and it re- 
 quires the most perilous of decisions : the discrimina-
 
 6 THE PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 
 
 tion between what should be considered causes, and 
 what are only effects of great changes at work in the 
 individual or the race, and the discrimination, often 
 no less difficult, between primitive survivals and the 
 morbid products of degeneration. To plot the result 
 in bold outlines is to face the certainty of failure in one 
 of two directions. The summary will either be in- 
 sufficient or it will be overloaded. Either the very 
 breadth of the generalizations and neglect of exceptions 
 must conduce to the inaccuracy and inadequacy of a 
 sketch-map, or if it be a fuller and more detailed chart 
 that is attempted, the result will resemble in its com- 
 plicated intricacy a model of a maze. In the following 
 pages I have attempted only the sketch-map, knowing 
 full well the limitations of its value and the defects that 
 must mar such an undertaking, however successfully 
 it should be accomplished. Were the generalizations 
 condensed here justified by adequate citation of the 
 authorities on which they are based, the result would 
 fill not a small volume but a whole library, consequently 
 a presentation of conclusions alone is offered. 
 
 I would make, also, one other disclaimer. What- 
 ever faults may be found with this compilation, 
 I beg that it may be acquitted of pretending to 
 finality any more than to completeness. Knowledge 
 is ever being extended, and views are daily shifting. 
 It may well be urged that the time has not yet come for 
 a comprehensive statement of man's nature, history, 
 and destiny. Myself I doubt if such a time ever will 
 come. But this little book does not profess to be any 
 such statement. At best it aims only at being an 
 mterim report on the investigation now going on of 
 those problems which must always be of absorbing 
 interest to mankind.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION OF MAN 
 
 To maintain his existence, man, like other animals, must solve the 
 problems presented by his environment. 
 
 In structure man departs little from the original model of the 
 mammals. 
 
 Man's position in his own group among the primates is matched by 
 corresponding forms in other groups. 
 
 A human group of terrestrial forms corresponds to the arboreal apes. 
 
 The modern and Neanderthal species of man correspond to light and 
 heavy species of apes. 
 
 Lack of specialization is associated in man with general competence 
 and versatility. 
 
 Inadequate powers in man were not made good by physical adaptation, 
 but by versatility. 
 
 Men contended with nature by utilizing — 
 (a) their collective powers, 
 (^) the powers of other animals, 
 (f) mechanical contrivances. 
 
 An immense period of time must have passed while the ancient and 
 modern races were being evolved. 
 
 THE rise of the modern type of man to the 
 position of predominance which he holds in 
 the world of to-day is not easy to explain, 
 either by his zoological position, his physical powers, 
 or his mental characteristics. His place in zoological 
 order has its parallel in other groups of animals, and 
 does not appear to give him any outstanding advantage. 
 His physical pecuHarities do not surpass those of other
 
 8 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 species, and indeed do not compare altogether favour- 
 ably with those of human races which have become 
 extinct. And much the same might be said of him 
 mentally. Evidences of his intelligence and habits 
 differ more in degree than in kind from those of his 
 nearest living relatives, and show individually but 
 shght advance on those of human races which have 
 disappeared. 
 
 Man, like every other species, survives subject to the 
 conditions summarized as the ' struggle for existence.' 
 The struggle for existence is one of great complexity. 
 First, there is the direct conflict between the animal 
 and its food. Every animal is engaged in trying to 
 obtain food from plants or animals which in turn try 
 to preserve their existence by eluding its observation 
 or pursuit. There are, of course, notable exceptions to 
 this generalization, such as conspicuous fruits which 
 depend on birds to scatter their seed. In any case this 
 is a limited conflict which must not end in victory and 
 extermination, but in the estabhshment of equilibrium. 
 Next, there is the conflict with competitors, of the same 
 species and of others, who are also dependent upon the 
 same food supply. Each hungry mouth is trying to 
 satisfy itself before other hungry mouths forestall it 
 from a limited supply. Finally, each animal is trying 
 to elude the observation or pursuit of enemies micro- 
 scopic or macroscopic whose prey it is liable to become. 
 No less severe is the conflict of the animal with its 
 physical surroundings, or, in other words, the demands 
 made upon its adaptabiHty to climatic vicissitudes. 
 The tendency to over-production keeps the struggle 
 for existence for ever active. Only the most efficient 
 individuals of the most efiicient species produced by 
 evolution, can either get enough to eat or escape being
 
 OF MAN 9 
 
 eaten long enough to maintain the continuity of their 
 kind in equilibrium with their environment. This is 
 spoken of as ' natural selection,' which determines the 
 * survival of the fittest.' But what constitutes fitness 
 to survive is determined by the nature of the struggle 
 for existence, which presents different problems for 
 solution to every species of animal either in its individuals 
 or its communities. 
 
 The struggle varies, moreover, both in nature and in 
 intensity from time to time and from age to age as 
 conditions change. At one time it may mean only that 
 a certain proportion of the young of a given species 
 are destroyed before they reach maturity. The number 
 of scarred and partially maimed individuals one finds 
 when collecting specimens of animals, may show that 
 a species has a considerable margin of hold upon life 
 within which its recuperative powers can act. Yet 
 there is for it, under existing conditions, a level of 
 competence below which individuals cannot fall on pain 
 of elimination. Changing conditions may raise the 
 pressure of life until without modification the species 
 can no longer maintain its existence, and then only 
 the varying individuals best fitted to the altering cir- 
 cumstances can live long and a new species is produced. 
 The change may be too sudden, or the adaptability of 
 the species too slight, to allow this, and a whole type 
 which can no longer maintain an equilibrium with its 
 environment disappears. 
 
 The equilibrium between a species and its environ- 
 ment, environment including other species, may be 
 upset in its favour and it outgrows its food-supply and 
 invades other feeding grounds. 
 
 It is, of course, only a figure of speech to speak of 
 animals invading new territories. Animals do not
 
 lO THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 usually advance like flights of locusts or Tartar armies, 
 but expand in the direction of a resistance so low as 
 to be almost a negative pressure. It may sometimes 
 happen that they migrate to places vv^here the conditions 
 are less suitable to them than those they have been 
 used to ; but this is because their former habitat has 
 undergone changes which, whether due to physical 
 causes or their own multiplication, make life there 
 more difficult than before. 
 
 It will be seen that the ' struggle for existence,' 
 which by sometimes only permitting the * survival of 
 the fittest ' modifies or eliminates species by ' natural 
 selection,' comprises all the methods of reaction by 
 which a species maintains, or fails to maintain, itself 
 * in equilibrium with its whole complex environment. 
 The term is a useful one so long as its elasticity is 
 understood. 
 
 Man at first sight appears singularly ill-equipped 
 for the struggle for existence. In almost every environ- 
 ment evolution has produced specially resistant types 
 of nuts and, working along parallel lines, specially com- 
 petent teeth for cracking them. Intervening in the 
 equilibrium between the specially hard nutshells and 
 the specially strong teeth, man seems likely to fare 
 badly, since he had no special adaptations which fit 
 and restrict him to any particular environment, and he 
 is in most cases a far slower breeder than his competitors. 
 I will endeavour to present the difficulty by means of 
 a crude illustration. 
 
 Let us suppose that man enters into the life of a 
 mountain valley where turnips (if I may be permitted 
 for convenience to use them), sheep and wolves have 
 reached an equilibrium. The prospect of man surviving 
 seems a very poor one. He has not the specialized ability
 
 OF MAN II 
 
 of the sheep to find turnips at the very moment when 
 they are ready to eat, and is still further handicapped 
 in competition with the sheep in that he is less able to 
 digest turnips. The wolves, finding man far less wary 
 and agile than the sheep, change their diet from lambs 
 to children. The sheep, availing themselves of this 
 respite, multiply so fast that they cause a turnip famine. 
 Man, endeavouring to change his diet to mutton, finds 
 the sheep already trained in self-preservation by the 
 constant pursuit of specialized carnivora. Man is 
 further handicapped by being a slower breeder than 
 either sheep or wolf. One would expect man to dis- 
 appear from an environment to which he is not like his 
 competitors specially adapted, in fact, to be vanquished 
 in the struggle for existence. On the contrary, he 
 triumphs not by special adaptation, but by mental and 
 motor versatility. He exterminates, or at least establishes, 
 a supremacy over the wolves by traps and weapons. 
 He collects turnips and cultivates them in enclosures 
 from which the sheep are fenced out. He limits the 
 number of the sheep, and cultivates them, too, for food. 
 And he overcomes his digestive inferiority by cooking 
 his meals. He has then solved his problems in the 
 struggle for existence until his own over-multiplication 
 shall raise them again in another form. 
 
 The problem of how man has managed not merely 
 to hold his own in the struggle for existence, but to win 
 the highest prizes, may well excite curiosity and invite 
 investigation if only by the difficulties with which it is 
 surrounded. 
 
 The position of man in the zoological scale is a 
 lowly one, if we consider only his structure, for his 
 bodily form shows little advance on a very early model. 
 The primitive animals which became the ancestors of
 
 12 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 all modern mammals were creatures with teeth of a 
 simple pattern, varying in number about a typical set 
 of forty-four, with four hmbs jointed to the trunk in 
 such a way as to permit of very free movement, and 
 with a tail. The limbs were constructed of an upper 
 segment with a single bone, a lower segment with two 
 separate bones, and ended each in five digits, each bearing 
 a claw or nail. Their mode of progression was planti- 
 grade. Man has discarded twelve of the forty-four 
 teeth of a typical mammalian set, and has reduced the 
 tail to a vestige in the skeleton ; but otherwise he 
 retains his ancestral form with remarkably few modi- 
 fications in its structure. 
 
 The extremely primitive structure of man becomes 
 more apparent if we compare him with an animal 
 which has become highly specialized in order to attain 
 peculiar powers, for instance, the horse. The horse 
 has not, like man and many other animals, reduced the 
 number of his teeth, but he has developed their structural 
 possibilities until they have attained a perfection which 
 the corresponding organs in man cannot approach. 
 He has so modified the attachment of his limbs to the 
 trunk that they will move only in one plane, and he has 
 so adapted their structure that movements in this plane 
 give him upon hard ground the most rapid locomotion 
 with the smallest effort. This has been attained by 
 fusing the two bones in the lower segment of the limb 
 to form one, by reducing the five digits on each limb to 
 one, and by converting the nail on that digit into a 
 solid hoof. These changes involve walking upon the 
 tip of the digits instead of the soles of the feet, as in the 
 primitive mammal type. That such extensive modifica- 
 tions should be necessary to attain success in the horse 
 sphere of Hfe cannot but excite wonder that man should
 
 OF MAN 13 
 
 have attained a like eminence with comparatively little 
 alteration in the original mammalian form. 
 
 But if specialization for a particular place in life 
 has carried the horse much further away from the 
 original model of the mammals than man, and though 
 other groups of mammals have diverged no less in other 
 directions, man's position is in no way unique. Man is 
 one of a large group of animals which have in common 
 many primitive characters, and few really great modifica- 
 tions of the structure of the common ancestors of all 
 mammals. Even within this group the position of man 
 is not one of isolation. Subdivisions of the groups have 
 progressed along parallel lines, and in the sub-groups, 
 other than that to which man belongs, his place is 
 occupied by corresponding forms. In fact the distinctive 
 origin of man must be placed very far back, in the time 
 of animals which have since become extinct, and it 
 antedates the specific characteristics of many mammals 
 surviving to-day. 
 
 When traced back, the primates, like most other 
 groups, approach the insectivora, which appear to have 
 changed least of all modern types from the original 
 model ; but traced forward from their beginnings they 
 diverge into two distinct lines, the lemur group and the 
 monkey group. These had a common origin and still 
 retain many resemblances, though the lemurs are seen 
 to have kept nearer to the primitive form than the 
 monkeys, and show this very clearly in their brains and 
 teeth. 
 
 Both the lemur group and the monkey group divide 
 each into two groups. Though all the primates were 
 originally arboreal, they early developed two widely 
 different types of climbers. One type we may call the 
 running and leaping climbers, the other the creeping
 
 14 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 and swinging climbers. Examples of the former, as 
 one would expect, of animals which run and leap 
 actively, have long tails ; the latter, with their more 
 deliberate ways and abandonment of leaping, have 
 reduced their tails till in some no external tail is present 
 at all. The lemur group consists of a division of running 
 and leaping animals with long tails, comprising the 
 lemurs proper and galagos of to-day ; and a division of 
 creeping climbers with tails reduced and in some cases 
 absent, including the pottos, loris, indris and similar 
 forms. The monkey group in the same way is divided 
 into the active leaping forms with tails, and the slow 
 swinging climbers, including the anthropoid apes and 
 man. In both groups the slower tailless forms show a 
 tendency to adopt the erect posture and walk on the 
 hind legs. So far as we know, in the lemur group the 
 erect position and gait are carried furthest in the 
 indris, while in the ape group they are fully developed 
 in man. 
 
 Confining our attention henceforward to the monkey 
 group we find that it divided early into two lines. One 
 line is now represented by the American monkeys, the 
 other by the old-world monkeys and apes, together with 
 man who is now cosmopolitan. 
 
 The American monkeys are the less altered group 
 of the two ; they retain a simple form of brain, and show 
 less reduction in number of teeth. Among them we 
 find running and leaping climbers, most notably the 
 squirrel monkeys, and swinging climbers, the extreme 
 example of which is the spider-monkey Ateles. But 
 among the American monkeys there is not such a clear 
 division as between the monkeys and apes of the oldworld, 
 or the two types among the lemur groups ; for instead 
 of dispensing with the tail, the slower American monkeys
 
 Plate I. 
 
 Galago. 
 
 Indris. 
 
 LEMUR TYPES. 
 
 Spider Monkey. Squirrel Monkey. 
 
 AMERICAN MONKEYS. 
 
 [To face p. 14.
 
 OF MAN 15 
 
 developed it as an additional organ for grasping and 
 swinging. Indeed, the American monkeys are more 
 like one uniform group, while the old-world monkeys 
 and apes form two. It may even be more correct to 
 consider that the monkeys split up simultaneously into 
 three divisions, the American group, the old-world 
 monkeys, and the anthropoids ; for the gibbons, which 
 are the oldest and least changed branch of the anthropoid 
 stock, whilst in the main conforming to the old-world 
 pattern, have characters which they share with the 
 American monkeys, but in which they differ from the 
 old-world monkeys. For instance, the anthropoid and 
 human group have reduced the original set of forty-four 
 teeth to thirty-two. So have the old-world monkeys. 
 The American monkeys, on the other hand, have reduced 
 the original forty-four by only eight instead of twelve, 
 and have thirty-six teeth. Turning, however, from the 
 number of the teeth in which the apes and the old-world 
 monkeys agree, and the new-world monkeys are different, 
 to the structure of the teeth, we find that the ape and 
 man group are similar to the American monkeys and 
 differ therein from the old-world monkeys. This seems 
 to narrow and isolate the group to which man belongs 
 for a very long way back, and clears the ground for 
 investigating man's position and antiquity within that 
 group. It may be useful here to recapitulate our 
 brief survey of the primates by means of a chart in 
 which it will be seen again how the primates have 
 advanced along two lines, each of which had produced 
 a tailless group, some members of which walk erect on 
 their hind feet.
 
 1 6 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 PR IMITIVE MAMMALS. 
 Primitive Primatej. 
 
 Lemur group. 
 
 Monkey group. 
 
 Active tailed 
 
 forms 
 
 (lemurs, 
 
 galagos, 
 
 etc.). 
 
 Slow short-tailed 
 forms 
 (potto, 
 indris, 
 etc.). 
 
 New world 
 tailed forms 
 
 {Cebus, 
 Chrysothrix, 
 
 Ateles, 
 
 etc.). 
 
 Old world 
 
 Tailless 
 
 tailed forms 
 
 forms 
 
 {Cerocpithe- 
 
 (gibbon. 
 
 cus. 
 
 gorilla, 
 
 Cynocephalus, 
 
 Man). 
 
 etc.). 
 
 
 Chart showing the Position of Man amongst the Primates, and the 
 RELATIVE Positions of the Tailless Forms in the Lemur a»d 
 Monkey Groups. 
 
 Before leaving the general review of the primates 
 to consider the anthropoid group in greater detail, 
 another interesting case of parallelism is worth noticing. 
 From amongst the tailed forms, the running and leaping 
 climbers, one branch, namely, the baboons, has diverged 
 from arboreal life in forests towards terrestrial life in 
 mountains, and established itself in rocky regions, 
 from which it is easy to raid the open country of the 
 plains. To do this successfully the baboons have to 
 pool their individual resources, and hence we find them 
 gregarious, with the elements of social organization. 
 This is very similar to a divergence which has taken 
 place amongst the tailless forms, the creeping and 
 swinging climbers, only in this case the change has 
 gone further. Amongst these we have, on the one 
 hand, the modern gibbons, which have become almost 
 perfect in their adaptation to arboreal life, and, on the 
 other, the human group, of which the surviving type
 
 ^LATE n 
 
 SlAMANG. HOOLOCK. 
 
 TYPES OF GIBBONS. 
 
 Gorilla. Chimpanzee. 
 
 TYPES OF GREAT APES. 
 
 [To /ace p. i6.
 
 I 

 
 OF MAN 17 
 
 of man is an essentially terrestrial animal. As in the 
 case of the baboons, man has only established him 
 as a terrestrial animal by gregarious life on a well- 
 developed system of mutual aid and defence. While 
 it will be necessary, before it is possible to deal with the 
 peculiarities of man, to devote further attention to 
 members of the group with which he has so much in 
 common anatomically, I shall have later to return to 
 the baboons, in whom we find a parallel to his habits 
 socially. 
 
 Although we have now narrowed down the group 
 of animals to which man belongs to comparatively few 
 forms, all closely related to him, I do not think it is 
 necessary here to go very deeply into their structure. 
 The points in which man differs from the apes, and 
 those in which he resembles them, anatomically, physio- 
 logically, and pathologically, are well known, and I see 
 no advantage to be gained by my recapitulating readily 
 accessible accounts upon which I could not hope to 
 improve. The point upon which I do wish to dwell is 
 that the position of man among these forms is not a 
 peculiar one, but that the position of modern man in 
 the human groups is matched by corresponding forms 
 in the differing anthropoid groups. 
 
 The original anthropoid stock, of which the modern 
 gibbons are the least changed descendants, seems to 
 have diverged early into the three lines which have 
 given us the modern gibbons, the modern great apes, 
 and modern man. While the gibbons specialized for 
 an arboreal existence, the second group seems to have 
 taken to a partly terrestrial life, spending much time 
 upon the ground though inhabiting forests. Of this 
 group the gorilla is both by structure and habit more 
 a terrestrial animal than the chimpanzee, while the
 
 1 8 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 orang is almost as purely an arboreal form as the gibbons, 
 though in a different way. 
 
 The third group at a very remote antiquity carried 
 the changes which we see in adaptations of the gorilla 
 to terrestrial life, to functional completion, and produced 
 a purely terrestrial form which gave rise to modern man. 
 This is the group of which we know least, for there is 
 only one species surviving to-day, and the remains of 
 extinct forms as yet unearthed are scanty and incom- 
 plete. Yet, though our knowledge of the human group 
 is in its infancy, we know enough to make some exceed- 
 ingly interesting comparisons with the other two. 
 
 It is remarkable that in each of the three groups 
 there is an early divergence into two types, a heavy 
 and a light, and a development along two lines, one 
 depending on strength, the other on agility. In the 
 present day we have a heavy gibbon, the siamang, and 
 a light form of gibbon, of which there are many species. 
 The African apes show a heavy form, the gorilla, and 
 a lighter, the chimpanzee, of which there are several 
 races. In the human group we have the heavy type, 
 the Neanderthal type of man, now extinct, and a light 
 type, modern man, divisible into many races. 
 
 OLD WORLD MONKEYS. 
 
 Tailed forms. Tailless forms. 
 
 Tree livers Ground livers Tree livers Ground livers 
 
 {Cercopithecus, (baboons). (gibbons, (human group). 
 
 Semnopithecus, apes). 
 etc.). 
 
 Chart showing corresponding Groups of Tree-living and 
 Ground-living Monkeys and Apes.
 
 OF MAN 19 
 
 ANTHROPOIDS. 
 
 Gibbons. Great Apes. Human group. 
 
 heavy light heavy light heavy liglit 
 
 (siamang). (hoolock). (gorilla), (chimpanzee). (Neanderthal (modern 
 
 man). man). 
 
 Chart showing Position of corresponding Heavy and Light 
 Groups of Apes. 
 
 At one time it was believed that modern man was 
 a modified descendant of the Neanderthal man, pro- 
 duced by a process of debrutalization ; but this view 
 can no longer be sustained. Esuly in the pleisto- 
 cene period, and presumably in the late pliocene, 
 the modern type of man had been differentiated, 
 and lived contemporaneously with the Neanderthal 
 type. Many people have attempted to draw realistic 
 portraits of both these types as they are conceived to 
 have looked when alive. But though the various results 
 are very interesting, I think it better not to reproduce 
 any of them here. We cannot be sure what extinct 
 men looked like or how their barbers and their tattooers 
 turned them out. If an anthropologist in another 
 planet were shown the skulls of a present-day 
 Norwegian and Tartar, it is possible that he might 
 be able to produce recognizable models of their 
 features. But unless he were aware of correlation, 
 undiscovered as yet by terrestrial anatomists, I doubt 
 if he could tell from the bones alone that one had been 
 a blond with a bushy beard and wavy hair, while the 
 other had had at most a few sparse bristles on his face 
 and straight coarse black hair on his scalp. The more
 
 20 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 an anthropologist knows the more cautious he becomes 
 in the reconstruction even of missing bones. And the 
 more successful he proves in this the more chary does 
 he seem of supplying from his inner consciousness the 
 photographs which we have not got of say Neanderthal 
 and Galley Hill types of man. In a verbal description 
 we are not committed to details about which we cannot 
 be sure. 
 
 The modern type of man requires no description : 
 living specimens abound. And so little has the type 
 changed in the last two hundred thousand years or so that 
 an individual whose bones have been unearthed from 
 pleistocene deposits might, were he alive to-day, be taken 
 to shops in Mile End Road and fitted out with ready-made 
 clothes, boots, gloves, and a hat, all from stock sizes. In 
 these he could probably walk up Leadenhall Street to the 
 Bank, and on down Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing 
 Cross, without attracting more attention from the 
 crowd, which now takes aliens for granted, than would 
 a modern negro or Chinaman. 
 
 The result would be quite different if one tried the 
 same experiment with one of his contemporaries of the 
 Neanderthal race. An average man of the Neanderthal 
 race would be about the same height as an average 
 modern man, but he probably would not stand as high, 
 for he would not be able to hold himself as erect. His 
 normal attitude would be a bent-kneed slouch, not from 
 preference or laziness, but from the shape of his bones. 
 His legs were not built to be quite straight, and his 
 head was so fitted to his neck that it would have to be 
 thrust forward. Instead of his head resting on the 
 top of his neck like a modern man's, his neck was inserted 
 into his head — below, it is true, but far back ; more 
 after the manner in which a dog's neck is continuous
 
 OF MAN 21 
 
 with its head behind. Then in general build he was far 
 more bulky and massive than the modern type. He 
 had much bigger teeth than modern man, and they 
 were implanted in his jaws much more firmly by roots 
 that were modified from the modern type to give 
 increased strength. He had a large brain, but his 
 forehead sloped back, and he had great bony ridges 
 over his eyes. His skull was thick, and was strengthened 
 with bony crests and ridges to give attachment for 
 the muscles which worked his large projecting jaws. 
 It would not be easy to clothe him with ready-made 
 garments of stock shapes and sizes, and he would probably 
 create a sensation if he appeared suddenly in a London 
 street. Yet he was at a stage of development equally 
 advanced on parallel lines with modern man, and before 
 he disappeared from the earth he could talk, was right- 
 handed, and had made some progress with the arts and 
 crafts. But, so far from forming a link connecting 
 modern man with the anthropoid stock, he had, like 
 the gorilla, specialized for ponderous strength, on lines 
 which took him further from the modern type of man 
 than the more primitive members of the human group, 
 whose remains have lately been found in older geological 
 formation. 
 
 There is one more physical consideration that must 
 not be omitted. In the great apes, and in both species 
 of man, sex can be distinguished in the whole skeleton 
 with ease, in parts of the skeleton, and even in many 
 isolated bones with less ease, but with fair certainty by 
 an expert. In the gibbons the secondary sexual differ- 
 ences are very much less marked, and it is often impossible 
 for even an expert to be sure whether the bones came 
 from a male or a female. 
 
 Now the gibbons have changed less than any of the
 
 22 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 anthropoid group from the type of its ancestral stock. 
 It is therefore fair to assume that, in proportion as the 
 types advanced in speciaHzation, the structure and 
 habits of the sexes diverged. The rationale need not 
 be described here. It depends mainly on mechanical 
 necessities arising out of the adaptation of a quadrupedal 
 animal to bipedal life. These placed the female under 
 certain structural disadvantages, and the needs of the 
 species required a compensating strengthening of the 
 male. A natural division of the functional contribu- 
 tions of each to the maintenance of the race in the 
 provision of food for the day and the safety of the next 
 generation, proceeded fari passu with the anatomical 
 modifications. 
 
 Here again, however, we find no special privileges 
 or immunities for man. His development has its 
 exact parallel in other groups. In the more brutal 
 type, the gorilla and the Neanderthal man, we find a 
 greater difference between the sexes, from a higher 
 specialization for strength in the male, than in the 
 lighter types, the modern man and the chimpanzee. 
 Since the specialization has been mainly to fit the male 
 for the hard work of providing for his mate and offspring, 
 for defending them and beating off his rivals, while 
 the female has confined herself mainly to adaptations 
 needed for the strictly reproductive side of hfe, the 
 females of all species tend to resemble one another 
 more than their corresponding males, and to change 
 less during growth from their infantile forms, which 
 all resemble one another more closely still. These 
 differences due to sex and age are more marked in the 
 advanced white races than in the retrograde negro 
 races ; yet in the whole modern race they are incom- 
 parably greater than in the gibbons, and considerably
 
 OF MAN 23 
 
 less than in the Neanderthal race. Even within the 
 limits of the modern type of man, sexual differences 
 are more noticeable in the bones of individuals of to-day 
 than in those of , contemporaries of the Neanderthal 
 race. A very slight accentuating of sexual differences 
 is one of the few changes which a geological epoch seems 
 to have made in modern man. 
 
 If we now turn our attention from the general frame 
 to the brain, from the structure of the body to the 
 characteristics of the mind, and from affinities in blood 
 to similarities in habits, we shall find that among the 
 primates modern man is every whit as closely paralleled 
 in these respects as his structural parallels would have 
 led us to expect. 
 
 The primates are descended from a stock that was 
 essentially arboreal. They specialized as climbers by 
 perfecting the hand and foot as grasping organs with 
 opposable thumb and great toe, not by enlarging the 
 nails into claws which are incompatible with sensitive 
 finger tips.^ Such a hand was not only a perfect climbing 
 organ, but also admirably adapted to examining objects 
 and picking things up. In necessary relation with this 
 power of manipulating and examining objects we find 
 a convergence of the eyes from the sides of the head to 
 the front, so that both can be focused on an object 
 at the same time. This binocular vision brings acute- 
 ness of sight to its maximum for near objects, whilst 
 limiting its range. 
 
 It was, however, not only by developing the forepaw 
 into a grasping hand that the tree-climbing habits of 
 the primates prepared the way for their subsequent 
 
 * In the marmosets all the digits have claws except the great toe. The 
 marmosets, however, are separated from the rest of the primates by other 
 characteristics : chiefly noticeable are the teeth and brain.
 
 24 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 mental development. The branches of the trees proved 
 a gymnasium in its more extended sense. All animals 
 specialized for active arboreal life show a common 
 tendency in the modification of the reproductive system. 
 The primitive mammalian stock w^as very fecund ; but 
 a large litter or a long pregnancy is incompatible v^'ith 
 arboreal activity. The tendency with arboreal types 
 is to reduce the number of offspring produced at one 
 time, to produce them very immature, and to carry and 
 nurse them in the arms. The single baby, the pectoral 
 position of the mammae, the long infancy and period 
 of dependence with its foreshadowing of intellectual 
 and social consequences, had all been evolved by the 
 primates in their conquest of the trees long before the 
 human group descended from the branches to under- 
 take the conquest of the ground. These are the chief 
 positive factors influencing the mental development 
 of the primates. The others are mainly negative. 
 
 It has been noted above that the primates are as 
 a group remarkable for the small amount of specializa- 
 tion they show. The effect of this on the nervous system 
 must be obvious at once. On the motor side they need 
 an exceptionally complete system of control. In a 
 highly specialized animal like the horse there is a com- 
 paratively small repertoire of very definite movements. 
 The Hmbs each end in a single digit, and they move 
 only in one plane and in regular sequences. Their 
 purpose is locomotive. The food is very uniform, and 
 is taken and treated in a uniform manner. Compare 
 this with the much larger number of members which a 
 monkey can move, the much greater independence and 
 wider range of their movements, and the far less uniform 
 requirements which they have to subserve. On the 
 sensory side again we find the same completeness of
 
 OF MAN 25 
 
 functional competence with the same absence of special- 
 ization and simplification. In more specialized animals 
 there is usually one sense highly developed at the expense 
 of the others. One animal finds and tests its food 
 almost entirely by the sense of smell, another almost 
 entirely by sight. One animal trusts to escaping its 
 enemies almost entirely by the acuteness of its hearing, 
 another by means of its eyes, another may rely on its 
 nose to save it from its enemies as well as from starva- 
 tion. Among the primates there is no such reliance 
 upon a single highly developed sense. A monkey to 
 preserve its precarious life must attend to all its per- 
 ceptions, whether of sight, hearing, smell, touch, etc., 
 as it cannot afford to disregard any of them. With 
 such a number and variety of sensory impressions coming 
 in, and such a number and variety of motor impulses 
 going out, it naturally follows that there must be a 
 highly effective co-ordinating machinery in the brain, 
 and the manifestations of this we call intelligence. All 
 things considered it is not remarkable that the primates 
 show an extraordinary versatility in their behaviour ; 
 but it does seem wonderful that they should have main- 
 tained their hold on life when, in every one of their 
 many spheres of activity, they have had to face the 
 competition of animals more highly specialized to fit 
 them for that place alone. Having made good their 
 hold upon life, it is easy to see how their hope of 
 advance lay in the development of this motor and 
 sensory versatility. 
 
 The primates having made good their attempt to 
 hold their own in the world by general competence 
 rather than specialization, it is astonishing how successful 
 they have been. One cannot watch a gibbon or a spider- 
 monkey in action without reahzing that the group has
 
 26 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 produced two of the most perfect climbing machines 
 conceivable. One cannot observe a monkey sitting on 
 a thin branch in a high wind, holding on with one 
 foot, scratching itself with the other, tearing the husk 
 of one nut with its hands and dealing with half a dozen 
 other nuts with its teeth, tongue, and cheek pouches, 
 whilst its general suspicious vigilance is not in the least 
 relaxed, without feeling compelled to admire a nervous 
 organization which can control so many different yet 
 precise movements simultaneously without any diminu- 
 tion of sensory receptivity. Yet one is driven to the 
 conclusion that neither by perfection of its mechanism 
 nor improvement of its reflexes could the group have 
 produced a dominant type without modifications which 
 would have destroyed its identity. The line of advance 
 for the primates must be along the development of the 
 intelligence and capacity for education. 
 
 The foundation of the mental powers of the primates 
 was laid when the structural peculiarities of the hand 
 were determined. The hand, like the foot, was originally 
 a grasping organ, designed to subserve the locomotion 
 of an arboreal animal. In the lemurs to this day it 
 remains chiefly an organ of locomotion. I noticed 
 that the tiny Demidorf's galagos, of which I kept several 
 in West Africa, picked up their food with their mouths, 
 not with their hands. If a piece of fruit was too large 
 for them to carry away they ate it on the ground, 
 biting pieces out of it without handling it. It was only 
 when food was held outside the bars of their cage, when 
 they could not reach it with their mouths, or when a 
 segment of some fruit was so balanced on the rind that 
 it slipped round when they tried to bite it, that they 
 grasped their food with their hands. Yet they used 
 their hands with great dexterity in catching moths,
 
 OF MAN 27 
 
 though they usually held the moth's body in their 
 mouths while they pulled off the wings preparatory 
 to eating it. While the lemurs often, after picking up 
 food in their mouths, hold it in their hands while they 
 eat, monkeys, as everyone must have observed, almost 
 always pick objects up in their hands and examine them 
 before submitting them to the conclusive ordeal of 
 taste. 
 
 I found it impossible to form a satisfactory opinion 
 on the relative intelligence of the galagos, which I kept 
 in West Africa, and the marmosets, which I had in South 
 America. Such a comparison would have been very 
 interesting, for the galago has an excellent hand, while 
 the marmoset lacks an opposable thumb and its fingers 
 end in claws. The galagos, however, were difficult 
 to observe, being nocturnal and very shy; and even 
 those which I had longest never would admit me to the 
 same intimacy as did the marmosets. Compared with 
 the marmosets, monkeys with their more effective hands 
 show a marked advance in intelligence. This is dis- 
 astrously evident when one's pets escape. Marmosets 
 show a delight in eluding recapture, they devote con- 
 siderable ingenuity to pilfering food and gratifying their 
 depraved taste for the dregs in wine-glasses, but their 
 interests seem limited. The diabolical curiosity of a 
 monkey, say a Cercopithecus, spares nothing. Having 
 exhausted his interest in eatables, he will investigate 
 everything, snatching small objects and carrying them 
 to a perch where he can study them without interfer- 
 ence. If he has the free run of a room for a time he 
 may become consumed with a passion for solving by 
 experiment the problem of what is breakable and what 
 is not. 
 
 As with the development of creeping and swinging
 
 28 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 styles of climbing the tail became reduced in size, the 
 muscles which had been required to work it were diverted 
 to form a floor for the pelvis, and an erect position and 
 gait were acquired. The hands then became more and 
 more released from the duties of locomotion. This 
 freedom of the hands is undoubtedly associated with 
 an advance in the habit of examining and experimenting 
 with objects. Those who have kept a chimpanzee must 
 have observed how continually its hands are occupied 
 with some toy, a bit of stick, a stone, a piece of rag, a 
 tin plate, a watch and chain, according to the luck of 
 the moment. Together with the habit of manipula- 
 tion grow the power of fixing the attention, and the 
 knowledge of the properties of matter. 
 
 I never realized how great this knowledge was until 
 I acquired a chimpanzee, and tried to limit the range 
 of her activity by tying her to a post of my veranda. 
 She watched me tie the knots mildly and without re- 
 monstrance, and then deftly and quickly untied them. 
 In spite of some experience of ropes picked up whilst 
 I was attached to a ship, I found that I could not secure 
 her to the veranda post by any knot which she could 
 not quite easily unravel. I next tried a strap, driving 
 two nails through one of the eyeholes, bending them 
 apart, and hammering them flat upon the wood. It 
 did not take her many days to work the nails loose, 
 after which it was a simple matter to twist them round 
 till they were parallel, and slip the strap off them. 
 It is useless to give the smaller West African monkeys 
 a long rope. Even a short rope attached to a ring 
 running on a smooth horizontal pole will not defeat 
 their perverse ingenuity in getting entangled. It was 
 not even necessary to provide a smooth pole and ring 
 for the chimpanzee. If her wire loop caught she
 
 OF MAN 29 
 
 understood what was wrong directly, and would go 
 back and ease it over the obstruction with her 
 hand. 
 
 From solving the mechanical problem involved in 
 overcoming an obstacle to freedom, it is a short step to 
 applying a knowledge of the properties of objects. A 
 cercopithecus monkey would recognize the dish in which 
 its food was given it, and show excitement when it was 
 produced ; but the chimpanzee when she was hungry 
 would bang her tin plate on the ground and hold it 
 out like a beggar asking alms to anyone who answered 
 her summons. This is coming much nearer to con- 
 structive ingenuity ; but one day my chimpanzee showed 
 unmistakably that she did not stop here. 
 
 So little is known of the habits of anthropoid apes 
 in the wild state, and it is so difficult to tell how far 
 their behaviour in captivity is influenced by association 
 with man, if not by actual training, that it is very 
 unwise to say what are the natural limits of their con- 
 structive ingenuity. I think I was therefore fortunate 
 in being able to observe the following incident. After 
 noticing for several days that my chimpanzee was at 
 frequent intervals trying to relieve some irritation in 
 one of her ears by inserting a finger, I found her subse- 
 quently inserting a small twig, apparently to get at the 
 depths which she had failed to reach with her finger. 
 Now my chimpanzee was very young, and had never 
 left West Africa or received any * education.' More- 
 over, this was not a ' trick ' which anyone was likely to 
 have taught her. Although she regarded me as a 
 friend and showed me a good deal of confidence, my 
 offer of assistance on this occasion was so painfully 
 misunderstood that, not thinking there was really much 
 the matter, I abandoned my attempt to examine the
 
 30 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 car which was troubling her. Yet she undoubtedly 
 selected and used a tool to accomplish something she 
 had failed to do with her unaided hand. If it is a fact 
 that these apes do not naturally supplement their hands 
 by the use of implements of any kind, I think it must 
 be the limitation of their needs, not of their intelli- 
 gence, which has prevented their adopting mechanical 
 accessories. 
 
 It is in the human group, which does need mechani- 
 cal aids, that we find them adopted. The versatility, 
 which became so marked in the monkeys leading an 
 arboreal life, received a fresh impetus when the human 
 group finally took to living on the ground. But modi- 
 fication is not likely to go on fast amongst arboreal 
 animals whilst they continue to live in forest, even 
 though, like the gorilla, they tend to living more and 
 more on the ground and correspondingly less in the trees. 
 It must have been when the human group from living 
 on the ground in the forests, made the next and obvious 
 step of venturing out of the forests into more open 
 country, that further development became necessary. 
 Then it was found how little modification was possible. 
 They doubtless made rapid improvement in bipedal 
 locomotion under the stress of ruthless selection ; but 
 at their best they could not attain a speed that, either 
 for escape or pursuit, would enable them to compete 
 with a host of quadrupeds against whose specialized 
 forms they had to hold their own in the open. Still 
 more were their deficiencies apparent in the matter of 
 weapons. They had neither teeth, claws, nor horns 
 which they could use either for attack or for defence. 
 Finally, the erect position and comparatively hairless 
 body made them conspicuous, and did not lend them- 
 selves to any modification which could assist in escaping
 
 OF MAN 31 
 
 the vigilance of either prey or foe. For purposes of 
 speed, armament, and concealment, the human form 
 was inadequate, and could not be adapted. Physically 
 the most noticeable peculiarities of man are those 
 modifications by which a quadruped is adapted to an 
 erect gait. The heart has to deal with a higher column 
 of fluid : the viscera require containing and supporting 
 by special arrangement of the abdominal walls and 
 the floor of the pelvis. The inadequacy of even these 
 adaptations is almost daily brought home to the practis- 
 ing surgeon. Though the human group had altered so 
 little from the original model, whose specialization had 
 given rise to more efficient forms in the new environment 
 they were invading, and man was ultimately to possess, 
 they had come too far from their origin to begin afresh : 
 the potentiality was gone : it was too late. The 
 problem of their success became a simple one. Their 
 one strong quality, which they had developed and the 
 animals of more specialized physique had neglected, was 
 versatility. Could they in virtue of their versatility 
 make use of, firstly, their collective powers, secondly, 
 the powers of other animals, and, thirdly, mechanical 
 appliances, to supply the deficiencies of their own 
 physique ? 
 
 I have given the three opportunities of the human 
 race in order, but in reality their value is equal. No 
 one of them could be neglected, and doubtless all three 
 were developed simultaneously, if slowly and unevenly. 
 Nowhere to-day do we find mankind without a social 
 system, domestic animals, and tools ; and the less perfect 
 we find these the less exacting do we find the environ- 
 ment, and the less secure the hold upon existence. 
 
 For examination, however, the various factors must 
 be considered separately, and it will be most convenient
 
 32 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 to take the third first. When we observe how easily 
 apes, and even monkeys, adopt instruments for use in 
 captivity, and how quickly they learn to appreciate a 
 fire, and even, in special cases, to light matches, the 
 extension of the use of mechanical aids, as the human 
 group developed, so far from presenting difficulties, 
 becomes inevitable. Probably a stick was frequently 
 used as an aid in walking before the erect gait was fully 
 attained, and with constant handhng of sticks came a 
 dim perception of purchase and leverage, and a practical 
 knowledge of how to strike a blow. With the perfecting 
 of the erect position and increased freedom of the arms 
 and hands a use of missiles follows naturally. After 
 watching a monkey wrap itself in a blanket and even 
 try to run about keeping the blanket still around it, one 
 finds no difficulty in accepting clothing as a very early 
 invention of man's precursors. The manner in which 
 mankind in recent times have increased the efficiency 
 of their tools and gained in artistic perception of the 
 possibilities latent in the materials with which they 
 worked, is the province of the anthropologist. Here my 
 object is only to draw attention to the part played by 
 the versatility which I have already accounted for, in 
 enabling a group of animals to survive in conditions 
 where they had either to increase their physical powers 
 by biological means, or supplement them by mechanical 
 contrivance. 
 
 Among the first manifestations of intelligence in the 
 human infant, and one of the most noticeable in most 
 monkeys, is an interest in animals of other species. 
 Sometimes this interest manifests itself in petting, 
 sometimes in tormenting other animals ; but often it is 
 shown in putting them to practical uses. A monkey 
 belonging to a caravan will, if not otherwise provided
 
 OF MAN 33 
 
 for, arrange to make its journey on the back of a dog 
 or sheep, or some other animal which will not stray- 
 away from the main body. These habits have their 
 biological pedigree. The young monkey is carried about 
 by its mother, to whom it clings tightly. As it grows 
 in size and weight and power to fend for itself, its 
 mother thinks her duties need weigh less heavily upon 
 her, and frequently dislodges her load. The young 
 one does not acquiesce readily at first, and the differences 
 of opinion between jockey and steed are often diverting 
 to watch. So, too, are the little creature's efforts to 
 find a substitute in any good-natured dog or goat upon 
 whose back it can establish itself. Ordinary observa- 
 tion will show anyone that neither monkeys nor children 
 are very discriminating in their choice of playfellows. 
 The association of man with herds of ruminants and 
 horses may well go back far beyond the evolution from 
 the human group of any creature that could be identified 
 with modern man, and the equestrian enthusiasm of 
 the modern fox hunter and Cossack be traceable to the 
 instinct which made the young of primeval monkeys 
 cling to their mothers as they leaped from branch to 
 branch. In the herds of herbivora on the plains, man 
 found guards, companions, and a source of food, which 
 he followed until they grew reconciled to him and 
 carried or dragged him from pasture to pasture for 
 years and centuries. Then, just as man became parasitic 
 on the herds of herbivora, so birds, rodents, and small 
 carnivora found advantage in attaching themselves to 
 the helpless, wasteful creatures which scattered food 
 about wherever they went. It was only in course of 
 time that man arose with sufficient artificial accessories 
 and intelligence to make himself predominant partner of 
 the league ; and eventually become owner of the herd 
 3
 
 34 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 and the poultry, master of the dog and cat, and the 
 victim of the rat. 
 
 The vast majority of the primates are gregarious. 
 Many of the lemurs, most of the monkeys of both old 
 and new hemispheres, and, among the anthropoids, 
 the gibbons at any rate, tend to keep together in troops. 
 They seem to do this chiefly for the sake of company, 
 though the benefit they derive from their association 
 in watching against their enemies and searching for 
 food is very apparent. The vigilance and inquisitiveness 
 of a dozen monkeys is a multiple, not the mere sum, of 
 the powers of a dozen individuals. It is difficult to 
 surprise a solitary monkey, but to catch any member of a 
 troop of a dozen is almost impossible. Yet in the forest 
 monkeys, though some species seem to make common 
 cause in keeping their young from danger, there are 
 very few indications of mutual help or organization, 
 and nothing even remotely resembling discipline. The 
 individuals of the community quarrel constantly, if 
 not violently, and are always on the look out to take 
 some mischievous advantage of each other. The great 
 fear of each monkey seems to be that his neighbour may 
 get hold of some dainty before he can forestall him. 
 With the anthropoids we note a different kind of in- 
 dividuahsm. A patriarchal system is coming in, and 
 the gorilla community especially seems to consist of a 
 single adult male, his wives and children. 
 
 Now the baboons are different. They comprise 
 the most terrestrial of the monkeys and, from living 
 in mountains and rocky ground, have gone on to raiding 
 and almost occupying the plains, particularly where they 
 are being cultivated by man. In fact the baboons, 
 among the monkeys, have taken just the line along 
 which the human group, among the anthropoids, have
 
 Plate III. 
 
 BABOONS. 
 
 [Tg/ace p. 34
 
 OF MAN 35 
 
 progressed. Accordingly their habits deserve the very- 
 closest study. Out of the looser association of the other 
 monkeys they have evolved a social organization. There 
 seems no doubt from the reports of numerous observers 
 that, when they advance to raid a plantation, they send 
 regular scouts ahead ; that when assured that the coast 
 is clear, they have a system of sentinels on the look out 
 while they are feeding ; that they have definite habits 
 of co-operation, several helping one another for instance 
 in turning over stones too heavy for the strength of one, 
 and sharing the grubs found underneath ; that when 
 the alarm is given they have a regular order of retreat 
 in which the old males cover the escape of the females 
 and young before retiring themselves ; that they help, 
 defend and avenge any member of their troop who is 
 wounded, and rely, without being disappointed, on 
 each other's assistance. In such an organization there 
 is need for the elements of discipline and means of 
 communication : the discipline is maintained by the 
 older males, and language goes at least as far as distinc- 
 tive sounds, summoning assistance, giving warning, and 
 announcing the discovery of food. The baboons com- 
 prise the largest, strongest, bravest, and most intelligent 
 monkeys, and their further advance might be possible 
 but for the obstacle opposed by man, who, advancing 
 by a parallel road, has already occupied the place they 
 might have gained. Man whilst often inclined to the 
 patriarchal system of the gorilla, would never have 
 reached his present dominant position had he not, 
 besides making good his physical deficiencies by means 
 of mechanical appliances, and supplementing his powers 
 by making use of other animals, at the same time multi- 
 plied his individual resources by a co-operation of a 
 kind similar to that of the baboons. By these three
 
 36 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 means, however, he secured his position in the fauna of 
 the globe. 
 
 Before passing on to another subject, a certain 
 consequence of the way in which man eventually secured 
 his position deserves notice. No one of the three 
 methods of advance just discussed involves great 
 structural changes. I think it can hardly be other 
 than a result of this that we find modern man to-day 
 so strangely uniform in structure. We find man to-day 
 all over the globe, from the Arctic regions to the tropics, 
 occupying every sort of situation, from ice floe to forest, 
 from grassy plain and desert to mountain, from river 
 bank, swamp, and lake to marine archipelago. We find 
 him carrying on his existence in these widely differing 
 localities by adopting the most dissimilar modes of life. 
 In one place he is pastoral, in another he subsists by 
 agriculture, elsewhere he depends on hunting or fishing. 
 Yet, whilst the distinctive characteristics of various 
 races are not to be overlooked, these strange animals 
 which live in such widely separated regions, by such 
 opposite methods, still present a uniformity in essentials 
 of structure which compels the biologist to place them 
 all within a single species. It must surely be because 
 they have solved the problems of gaining a livelihood, 
 and escaping their enemies, by a versatility which 
 enabled them to convert to their needs certain features 
 of every environment into which they have wandered 
 or been driven, that they have maintained their hold on 
 life through long ages without being obliged to adapt 
 their structure to pecuHar locaHties to an extent sufficient 
 to destroy their identity as a species. 
 
 So far I have said nothing about the length of time 
 which has passed since modern man as a distinct species 
 arose from the human group. Geological time is so
 
 OF MAN 37 
 
 tremendous that its terms are apt to convey little 
 except to minds habituated to geological conceptions. 
 Moreover, the remains of early members of the human 
 group so far unearthed are so few that the time has not 
 yet come for defining the periods through which modern 
 man was emerging from the human group. But no 
 one who ponders the biological and geological evidence 
 of the skulls from Piltdown in Sussex, from Trinil in 
 Java, from Gibraltar, from Chapelle-aux-Saints, from 
 Heidelberg, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and Galley 
 Hill, can fail to be impressed by the variety of human 
 forms in ages vastly remote from the present day, which 
 must for their evolution have required the passage of 
 an enormous time since the separation from the primate 
 stock of the original ancestors of the human group. 
 If we confine our attention to the modern type of man 
 only, we can hardly be more precise. Of recent years 
 an increasing number of early remains of this species 
 have been available for examination, and the oldest 
 are divisible into a number of well-marked races. In 
 this connection Professor Keith says, " We may allow 
 a period of at least two hundred thousand years to 
 have elapsed since the modern type of man appeared ; 
 the probability is that his antiquity is infinitely greater, 
 for he is fully evolved when we meet him first." 
 
 We may attack the same problem in a different 
 way, by reviewing the end-products of human evolu- 
 tion — the existing races of the present day — and 
 endeavouring to calculate backwards. Mankind at the 
 present day falls into three large divisions, each of 
 which is capable of much, though less definite, sub- 
 division. The main divisions are, of course, parallel 
 groups, but for convenience we must take them in order 
 for purposes of description. In this sense only do
 
 38 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 numbers apply to them when one is called the first 
 group, another the second, and so on. 
 
 The first division is made up of races which agree 
 
 in having long, curly or wavy hair on the scalp, luxuriant 
 
 beards, and, when compared with other races, much hair 
 
 on the body. The forehead is high, with a pair of 
 
 bosses, separated by a slight depression, from well-marked 
 
 brows. The jaws are rather small, the teeth not being 
 
 large, and consequent upon thl'^ the bones of the face 
 
 are also inclined to be small. The cheek-bones are not 
 
 prominent, and the face is narrowed, with a well bridged 
 
 nose and strongly marked chin. The lips tend to be 
 
 thin. The colour of the skin ranges from black to white. 
 
 These are the distinguishing characters most discernible 
 
 to those who have neither the knowledge nor the in- 
 
 chnation to go further into anatomical peculiarities. 
 
 Within this division are included the Australian 
 
 aborigines,^ in whom the reduction of the teeth, with 
 
 the consequent narrowing of the face and raising of the 
 
 nose, are least marked, the Ainus of Japan, and most of 
 
 the races of Western Asia, India, and Europe. During 
 
 recent times the whitest races of this division have 
 
 spread from Europe over the greater part of the world. 
 
 The second division consists of races showing greater 
 
 uniformity. The hair of the scalp tends to be short, 
 
 and is ' crinkly.' Beards are absent or scanty, and the 
 
 body almost free from hair, with a pecuharly soft, 
 
 velvety skin. The forehead is almost uniformly convex, 
 
 not as in the foregoing, divided into two bosses, and 
 
 the brows are weakly developed. The teeth are large, 
 
 and the jaws and their supporting parts ample in order 
 
 to hold them. Consequently the face is wide and 
 
 The Australian type exhibits so many marked peculiarities that some 
 authorities would make of it a fourth race of equal value with the other three.
 
 Plate IV. 
 
 m 
 
 W 
 CJ 
 
 < 
 o 
 
 W 
 
 {To face p.
 
 OF MAN 39 
 
 prognathous, with rather small cheek-bones, retreating 
 chin, and flat, wide nose. The lips are thick, and the 
 colour of the skin always dark, often black. The races 
 comprising this division formerly inhabited the tropical 
 parts of the old world and even extended as far as 
 Tasmania. During recent times the Tasmanian branch 
 has been exterminated, and the African negroes more 
 widely distributed by the intervention of white races. 
 
 The third great division is popularly called the 
 yellow, or Mongolian race. It is characterized by coarse, 
 straight, often very long hair on the scalp, and scanti- 
 ness of hair on the face and body. The skin compared 
 with that of the negro is harsh. The forehead is rather 
 high, with weak brows over sunken eyes. The teeth 
 are moderate in size, consequently the jaws are fairly 
 projecting and the chin not very pronounced. A 
 noticeable peculiarity of the type is the great size and 
 width of the cheek-bones, with corresponding smallness 
 of the nose. Along with, and to a certain extent 
 depending on, the large size of the cheek-bones, the 
 smallness of the nose and the weakness of the brows, is 
 found a fold of skin vertically overlapping the inner 
 angle of the eye to which it gives an appearance of 
 obliqueness. The lips are only moderately full or thin. 
 The colour of the skin ranges from light brown to yellow 
 or white. This division of mankind is predominant in 
 Eastern Asia, and, as far as is known at present, an off- 
 shoot from it is the only type of man that ever inhabited 
 the American continent prior to the recent migration 
 from Europe. 
 
 Even in the light of the few superficial points of 
 difEerence given here, it will be obvious that the species 
 has diverged into three such very distinct types that 
 it must have required untold ages for their pecuharities
 
 40 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION 
 
 to have been developed and become fixed. But when 
 the races forming one of these divisions are subjected 
 to a hke scrutiny and found to be traceable almost as 
 far back as we can trace modern man, we are forced to 
 admit that ' surviving ' rather than ' modern ' is the 
 term which should be employed. During the decline 
 of the last glacial period, Europe was occupied by a 
 race of tall, large-brained, ingenious and highly artistic 
 men with some peculiarities recalling the Mongolian 
 type. At about the same time, and certainly earlier, 
 for their remains can be traced further back, there were 
 in South Europe — possibly an overflow from North 
 Africa — a race with far more marked negroid character- 
 istics. Prehistoric races being usually named from the 
 site where their remains were first discovered, the former 
 is known as the Cro-Magnon race. The latter, known 
 as the Grimaldi race, was named in honour of the 
 Prince of Monaco, to whom science owes so much. 
 Both these races seem to have become extinct ; but 
 later on we find established in Europe as their successors 
 the types which form the bulk of its inhabitants to-day. 
 These comparatively puny and barbaric races must have 
 been the contemporaries of the Cro-Magnon and Grimaldi 
 races somewhere before they replaced them in Europe. 
 Indeed there even seems reason to beheve that the Thames 
 valley or Galley Hill type of man, who was established in 
 Europe before the arrival of the Cro-Magnon race, is of 
 the same stock, though coming in advance of the main tide 
 of immigration and being separated from it by a period 
 of severe cHmatic changes, he possibly became extinct 
 and did not contribute to the population of to-day.^ 
 
 ' It is only right to say that the age of the remains discovered at Galley Hill 
 i« very keenly disputed. While not presuming to decide between conflicting 
 authorities, I am myself convinced by the claims Professor Keith has advanced 
 for accepting their great antiquity.
 
 OF MAN 41 
 
 After the last ice age passed, new types of men 
 invaded and occupied Europe. They were members 
 of the first great division of existing mankind, with 
 wavy hair and more or less light-coloured skins. Along 
 the north of Africa, isolated from the negroes of the 
 southern forests by the great deserts, came a long-headed 
 race of small stature and dark complexion, active but 
 intolerant of cold. Occupying the coasts of the Medi- 
 terranean mainly at its western end, this race is spoken of 
 as the ' Mediterranean race.' Across the uplands of 
 Central Europe extending south-east into Asia is estab- 
 lished a short-headed race of men, slightly taller, with 
 sallow skins and requiring a considerable altitude for 
 their well-being. These are known as the ' Alpine 
 race.' Thirdly, there is the tall, long-headed, blonde 
 ' Northern race.' There may have been other races 
 as well, but if so they are less easy to trace. 
 
 A striking peculiarity of the primates is the freedom 
 with which they interbreed. Monkeys, not merely of 
 different species but of different genera {Cynocefhalus and 
 Macacus), will mate and produce offspring in captivity. 
 Consequently the fertility inter se of the various races 
 of modern man is not wonderful ; indeed it would not 
 be surprising if the mating of the extinct Neanderthal 
 race with the contemporary Grimaldi and Cro-Magnon, 
 or even representatives of the surviving modern type 
 should be proved to have been possible. Consequently 
 when we consider the migration and movement of armies 
 within historic times, it might have been expected that 
 the distinctions between the Mediterranean, the Alpine, 
 and the Northern races, so noticeable in remains of 
 neolithic times, would have become blurred by later 
 fusion. 
 
 Yet this is not the case. Throughout the great
 
 42 THE ZOOLOGICAL POSITION OF MAN 
 
 bulk of the population of Europe the three types are 
 still clearly traceable, and in a London crowd of to-day 
 one can still find individuals recalling the palaeolithic 
 Thames Valley type. Such consideration cannot fail 
 to direct our thoughts to the long ages that must have 
 been necessary to evolve within the white race char- 
 acteristics which remain so fixed and persistent. When 
 we add to this the still longer period during which 
 modern man was undergoing separation into the three 
 great divisions already described, we cannot but feel 
 that the period of ten to possibly twelve thousand years 
 through which a small portion of mankind has built 
 up the civilization we know, and kept historical records 
 of the process, is after all only an episode, and feel our 
 imagination stimulated to desire a fuller knowledge of 
 the history and destiny of the human species.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF MAN AND 
 THEIR CULTURE 
 
 Various species of man were widely distributed over the world at a 
 period remote in geological time. 
 
 The Neanderthal species became dominant and developed a culture. 
 
 It became extinct for reasons which as yet are not known. 
 
 There is little from which to infer the history of ' Modern man * 
 during his coexistence with the Neanderthal species. 
 
 Various races, of which the best known is the Cro-Magnon race, 
 flourished and attained a high culture before the close of the last ice age. 
 
 Human versatility, gaining a margin of power beyond immediate 
 needs, produces philosophy and art. 
 
 The growth and decline of prehistoric art follows the same course as 
 that of later ages. 
 
 The palaeolithic races of Europe and their culture became extinct 
 for reasons that are not known. 
 
 Other races survived to replace them and found a new culture. 
 
 THE human species, which has become the 
 dominant animal in the world of to-day, 
 and is therefore known by the rather mis- 
 leading title of ' modern man,' is the survivor of two 
 species, namely, the Neanderthal man and the * modern 
 man,' which in times past were contemporaries. That, 
 of course, is as far only as our present knowledge takes 
 us. There may have been other species, for these two 
 must have been survivors of the wider human group 
 which, becoming terrestrial, branched off from the 
 anthropoids, leaving them to continue an arboreal life.
 
 44 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 Why ' modern man ' alone of the human group has 
 survived to inherit the earth, and how he accompHshed 
 its conquest, is a problem that cannot yet be solved, and 
 perhaps will remain insoluble for ever. 
 
 It would appear that the human group was early 
 distributed over the greater part of the old world. 
 The remains of the two truly human types which show 
 least specialization in a direction leading them away 
 from the common stock of the anthropoids have been 
 unearthed, one at Piltdown in England, and the other 
 at Trinil in Java. The Javan type shows affinity to the 
 Neanderthal man in the skull, though it was a straighter 
 limbed and more Hghtly built animal. The Piltdown 
 man, though by far the most ape-Hke of human remains 
 yet found, has much in common with modern man, 
 and may be his ancestral type, while he certainly has no 
 place in the direct hne of the Neanderthal man's descent. 
 The age of both is very great, but cannot be fixed with 
 sufficient precision for it to be said if either is older 
 than the modern and the Neanderthal types may possibly 
 be. Until a great deal more is known than has been 
 discovered as yet, the only safe generalization is the very 
 wide one : that the early members of the human group 
 were diverse in structure and extensively distributed 
 over the old world at a period remote in geological 
 time. 
 
 Only the later chapters of human history are at all 
 clearly written : there is little from which to recon- 
 struct the earlier ones. This is partly because only a 
 small area of the world's surface has been searched by 
 palaeontologists, and partly because man is so difficult 
 an animal to trace. While most animals of the size of 
 man specialized for strength in some members, man 
 compensated his deficiencies in tooth and limb by
 
 Plate V. 
 
 EARLY TYPES OF THE HUMAN GROUP 
 (restored skulls drawn to scale). 
 
 Neanderthal Type. Modern Type. 
 
 Trinil man. Piltdown man. 
 
 Chapelle-aux-Saints men. Cro-Magnon man. 
 
 [To /ace p. 44.
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 45 
 
 making use of sticks and stones. He can be traced much 
 further by the implements he used than hy the remains 
 of his body, but in the earHer times in which we most 
 need evidence, he had not learned to make those tools 
 which he fashioned from durable materials of shapes 
 sufficiently characteristic for them to afford us a very 
 reliable guide. Moreover, though he flung the charred 
 and broken bones of the animals he ate, on the floor of 
 the cave where he lived, so that we find them in 
 abundance, he seems usually to have taken the trouble 
 to remove his companions and mates when they died, 
 and to have disposed of them in ways less calculated to 
 preserve them. 
 
 The Neanderthal species, whatever its place of origin, 
 was well distributed throughout Europe prior to the 
 last ice age. Their actual bones have been oftenest 
 found in France, chiefly owing to the admirable care 
 and intelligence with which the French anthropologists 
 have sought for them. At present we have not sufficient 
 data to say what was the distribution of this race through- 
 out the world, how densely it populated the area it 
 occupied, or what led to its extinction. We can only 
 infer, observing great caution, its mode of life and how 
 it won and, for a time, held its place in the European 
 fauna, and guess at the way in which a herbivorous 
 animal, accustomed to dealing with very hard food which 
 wore down the crowns of its teeth, an animal of forest 
 and more remotely of arboreal ancestry, poorly endowed, 
 moreover, with mechanism for communication, came 
 eventually to live in caves, to eat the flesh of animals 
 it had killed and cooked over a fire, and to develop 
 a form of social life. 
 
 Judging from the bulk of the Neanderthal man, we 
 may infer that both his individual strength and the large
 
 46 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 quantity of food he must have required would tend to 
 a solitary rather than a gregarious life. He may well 
 have lived, at first at any rate, in famihes consisting of 
 a single adult male with his wives and children, as the 
 gorilla does to-day. Moreover, the disparity in the 
 strength of the sexes, in which the greater strength of 
 the male agrees more with the gorilla than with modern 
 man, may well mean that, like the gorilla, the adult 
 Neanderthal man was a morose and savage beast with 
 neither much need nor much toleration for his fellows. 
 In this he was probably following a path which led him 
 away from the original mode of life retained by the 
 other members of the group, and it may well have been 
 this which, in spite of later attempts to retrace his steps, 
 brought him to extinction. 
 
 A characteristic universal in all members of the 
 decisively human group is a levelling of the biting 
 edges of the teeth. The long canines, which in other 
 primates overlap the opposing jaw and restrict its play 
 of lateral movement, are reduced in man to the level of 
 the other teeth. This allows of to and fro and side 
 to side, grinding rather than crushing, movements for 
 the mastication of hard vegetable food. As a by-product 
 it made possible the later development of the mechanism 
 of articulate speech. The mouth parts in the earliest 
 discovered remains of the Neanderthal species show 
 that structurally mastication took precedence over 
 speech. This had been to some extent reversed in the 
 time which elapsed before he became extinct. 
 
 The earliest Neanderthal men left their remains 
 with those of extinct species of elephant, rhinoceros, 
 hippopotamus, tiger and horse and surviving species 
 of deer and pig. On what terms they lived with these 
 animals we do not know. This was at the beginning
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 47 
 
 of the pleistocene period, when receding ice was allowing 
 the climate of Europe once more to become temperate. 
 Before the next and most recent ice invasion, he had 
 learned to cook and eat the large animals. He probably 
 killed them at first in self-defence, and for this purpose 
 he used roughly-made stone weapons. We cannot tell 
 whether modern man imitated him in shaping stone 
 weapons or made the discovery independently, or whether 
 on the other hand the Neanderthal man adopted 
 the weapons of ' modern man ' as other races in recent 
 times adopted the firearms which Europeans had 
 invented. There remains yet another possibility, namely, 
 that stones were chipped to make weapons before the 
 human group divided to form the various species we 
 know. As time went on, though his structural features 
 did not undergo a change in kind which would bring 
 them nearer to the modern type, they became less 
 salient and pronounced, and, if enough material were 
 available for the history of the species to be traced, we 
 might find that it had become differentiated into 
 different races. But after the last ice invasion receded 
 from Europe the Neanderthal men were extinct. 
 Before that happened they had taken to building hearths 
 in their caves, to making instruments of bone as well 
 as stone, and to burying their dead. From the age and 
 defective teeth of some specimens it would appear that 
 the community had been evolved which aided and 
 protected all its own members even when old and sick. 
 If the scanty evidence which leads some to believe that 
 the Neanderthal men were cannibals is correctly inter- 
 preted, the suppression of the struggle for existence 
 within the community may well have been the outcome 
 of growing competition between communities, and 
 intertribal warfare provided victims for the larder.
 
 48 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 Why the Neanderthal man, who though different from 
 modern man and in many ways more brutal, yet possessed 
 as large a brain as well as a more powerful body should 
 have become extinct, is a question which, as we have 
 said, it is impossible to answer with certainty. It may 
 well be that he became too highly specialized during 
 the time when men being few contended not with one 
 another but with nature, to be able to combine on 
 a large enough scale for successful competition against 
 other men after human multiplication shifted the 
 stress of life in a new direction. It may be that his 
 adaptability was insufficient to meet the new conditions 
 brought about by changes in the earth's climate. All 
 that can be said with certainty is that this powerful 
 species became extinct while the modern type of man 
 survived. 
 
 Even less is known about the early history of the 
 modern type than of the Neanderthal man. We may 
 speculate upon the course his development took ; but 
 we should remember that it is mere a 'priori reasoning 
 on our part. Keeping this steadily in mind we may 
 profitably make the attempt. Of the factors at work 
 in shaping ' modern man,' two at any rate must have 
 been very influential. Firstly, his individual weakness 
 must have confirmed his tendency to associate with his 
 fellows for common safety and advantage. This is 
 the opposite to what I have suggested may have happened 
 in the case of the Neanderthal species. Secondly, the 
 changes in the world's climate which altered the face 
 of the now temperate regions again and again as the 
 ice advanced and receded, alternately exterminating 
 some species of animals and driving out others, then, 
 later on, inviting their return as a new vegetation 
 appeared on the devastated land, must have driven man
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 49 
 
 to many migrations and compelled him to turn his one 
 strong quality, his versatility, to constant adaptation in 
 face of new conditions. Men who could not form 
 strong communities must have died out ; and com- 
 munities which could not meet needs as they arose 
 could have had little better chance of surviving. The 
 successful community must have possessed collectively 
 the intelligence to perceive the path of least resistance 
 and the enterprise to follow it ; and the ingenuity 
 whilst on its wanderings to hunt now the bear and now 
 the pig as each came in its way, to tame now the horse 
 now the reindeer as each was required, to live in either 
 caves or tents according to the dictates of circumstances 
 into which it was forced, and to take ready advantage 
 of the materials nearest to hand where there was necessity 
 to invent or improve the tools for which the physical 
 needs of the occasion called. Selection may well have 
 acted on these lines during long ages even before a trail 
 of stone implements is found indicating the march of 
 man across geological periods. When a failing food 
 supply or an encroaching enemy made a move inevi- 
 table, the most adventurous and most intelligent no doubt 
 led the way first and chose the right direction, and 
 those most deficient in these qualities paid the penalty 
 for never managing to move at all. When conditions 
 were favourable only the more stable settled down to 
 make the best of them. 
 
 This may or may not be the process which raised 
 man step by step by alternate reward and elimination 
 until the doubtful period was passed and there survived 
 a species with a degree of initiative, adaptability, and 
 cohesion to give to its communities if not to its individuals 
 a secure hold upon existence. 
 
 Apart from the Neanderthal men, whom we may 
 4
 
 50 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 now dismiss, the first race that we know at all well is 
 the Cro-Magnon. When we first catch sight of them 
 they appear to have been the dominant race on earth, 
 but in the course of their history they were contempo- 
 raries with the Neanderthal men, the Grimaldi race, the 
 Galley Hill or Thames Valley race, all of whom reached 
 Europe before them, and very likely other races as well. 
 In the last cold period they tower over all their known 
 contemporaries both literally, for they were many of 
 them well over six feet in height while other men 
 stood usually not much over five feet, and also in every 
 field of human attainment. Where their apprenticeship 
 to culture was passed, and by what forces of nature the 
 backward were weeded out and the progressive educated, 
 we do not know ; but a long probationary period must 
 lie behind the earliest evidences of their occupation of 
 Southern Europe. They are found between seventy 
 thousand and one hundred thousand years ago living 
 in strong communities, occupying caves, according to 
 some authorities domesticating the reindeer and 
 the horse, which they haltered with twisted ropes, 
 and fashioning weapons of chipped stone and carved 
 bone and horn. In all this we see the results of 
 a process which it would be interesting to trace if 
 we could do so. We can only infer, to recapitulate 
 much that I said in the previous chapter, how the lack 
 of specialization in the nervous system resulted in a 
 high versatility ; how the versatility developed into a 
 conscious intelligence, which first compensated the lack 
 of automatic or instinctive response to the needs of a 
 definite environment by a power of adaptation within 
 a very wide range, to any environment, and finally gave 
 more complete powers of choosing a habitat and mastering 
 the natural conditions in which life had to be lived
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 51 
 
 than were possessed by any other animal. The primitive 
 form of Hmbs lacked that specialization for a narrow 
 range of movements which by exactly fitting the type 
 for life in a peculiar locality, would have restricted it 
 wholly to that locality ; and led, when guided by the 
 versatility, to a quickness in taking advantage of every 
 aid that stick or stone or beast could offer. This led 
 on through the use of tools to the improvement of tools, 
 till they were able to meet a wide range of needs. The 
 association of individuals who, dependent upon one 
 another, formed communities in which the individuals 
 specialized in different directions, contributing to the 
 common need each what each could do best, eventu- 
 ally evolved communities which were so far victorious 
 over nature that to a great extent they rose above an 
 equilibrium with nature and became masters of their 
 environment. 
 
 At this point there began a new era in the history of 
 animal life : an animal had been evolved which, not 
 individually but in its communities, had greater powers 
 than were necessary to maintain an equilibrium with 
 opposing forces in its environment. This meant that 
 some at any rate of the individuals forming them were 
 able at certain periods of their lives to enjoy leisure 
 in security, that is to say, that conditions which we now 
 know to be primarily essential to the evolution of philo- 
 sophy and art had been attained. The man who is 
 relieved from the struggle for existence turns the 
 superfluous intelligence, thus set free, to observation 
 and introspection in an attempt to solve the problem 
 of existence. How the problem appeared to the Cro- 
 Magnon philosophers, and how they attempted to solve 
 it, we cannot tell ; but from slight indications, such as 
 the way they buried their dead with the articles they
 
 52 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 needed during life around them, we may infer that they 
 did not believe that consciousness was limited to the 
 material plane, or that existence ended with the death 
 of the material body. But in leisure and security 
 other faculties call for exercise besides those which can 
 be employed, if not satisfied, in philosophic speculation. 
 The energy and ingenuity which have been evolved for 
 utilitarian ends do not vanish instantly when the relaxed 
 strain of life no longer demands their full exercise. The 
 man who has made all the weapons he requires goes 
 on whittling at them and develops ornamentation. The 
 possibiHties combined in the materials he has been 
 accustomed to work with, and the mastery his skill has 
 gained over them, start him idly experimenting, and later 
 awake a need for self-expression. Thus art is born. 
 
 I do not think explanations of the origin of art need 
 be laboured. The same qualities of mind, which per- 
 ceived first that a piece of broken flint was a good instru- 
 ment for cutting and then that by further chipping it 
 could be made a still better tool, could also perceive in 
 a piece of bone a resemblance to some familiar object, 
 which resemblance could be made more apparent by 
 scraping and carving with the sharp flint. There is 
 at the present time a tendency to regard the wall or 
 rock paintings of primitive races as the mere accessories 
 of a system of magic. I shall have to consider later how 
 far the kind of magic implied is a primitive and how far 
 a decadent manifestation of social health, but for the 
 present I confess to believing that art originated at any 
 rate for art's sake. 
 
 In the development of art the development of the 
 mind is shown as in diagrams. At first the universe 
 appears a composite of unrelated details. A primitive 
 mind exercised in carving a face out of a piece of bone
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 53 
 
 gives it eyes because faces have eyes, mouth and nose 
 for the same reason, and covers the area of the scalp 
 with hnes or bosses which indicate the hair about as 
 realistically as a green wash over certain parts of a map 
 may indicate forest land. The several features have 
 no relation to each other. The only relation they bear 
 is one of juxtaposition for long after a high degree of 
 realism has been attained in the execution of each separate 
 detail. As the mind develops, the idea of things as 
 a whole dawns slowly. The separate features of a face 
 are then treated not as details to be executed and 
 judged separately, but as component parts of a whole 
 to be subordinated to a central idea. Growing powers 
 of observation and perception do away with the ideas 
 of separate eyes, and noses and hair areas to be executed 
 each with elaborate and conventional care and put 
 together like bricks to make a wall. The developing 
 artist is no longer content with his complicated symbol 
 for an eye or a nose ; he studies nature to learn what 
 his subject as a whole is really like. This is the ordinary 
 course taken in the growth of art which comes both as 
 a cause and effect of mental development. Then 
 follows decline. The very perfection attained by the 
 most successful artists distracts those who follow them 
 later from nature to art. The aim of the worker is no 
 longer to master nature, but to equal those who have 
 done so. There sets in a period of imitation, of repro- 
 duction not from nature, but from other men's con- 
 ceptions and of other men's methods. Over-elaboration 
 of detail returns with an attention to accessories and 
 externals until nature, no longer seen equal and whole, 
 is lost. This decadence follows in normal course upon 
 the growth and perfection of art, the whole forming 
 a cycle constantly recurring in human history.
 
 54 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF 
 
 The structure and habits of extinct animals have 
 largely been deduced from their jaws and teeth, since 
 these are not only their most characteristic but also 
 their most permanent parts. The mental character 
 and development of races of men have largely been 
 deduced from their carvings and statuary, since not 
 only do these give the clearest evidences of technical 
 skill, but are also the most permanent and consequently 
 abundant objects for comparison. 
 
 In this phase of human development, the age of 
 hunters, w^hen men depended for their living upon 
 dexterity and cultivated powers of observation, several 
 races seem to have reached a high standard of artistic 
 capabihty. Beautiful relics are attributed by some 
 authorities to the skill of the Grimaldi and other 
 races, whether justly or not it is impossible to say. 
 This, however, we know : that the Cro-Magnon men 
 attained to something very near to absolute perfection 
 in artistic achievement. Some of their carvings, both 
 on the flat and in the round, are exquisite. In their 
 paintings, which can still be seen on the walls^of caves, 
 they show mastery of colour as well as line. In many 
 of their animal paintings we find colour, proportion 
 and perspective correctly rendered and inspired with 
 that indefinite something we call artistic feeling. The 
 peculiarities of their style seem to place them most 
 naturally alongside the modern Japanese ; but in 
 proficiency in their own art they rank as masters of equal 
 standing with the masters of other schools. Like the 
 artists of most primitive races, they occupied them- 
 selves mainly with animals. Man at this stage seems 
 to take himself very much for granted and to study 
 himself much less than in the days of a dying civiliza- 
 tion, when peculiarities in the temperament of the
 
 MAN AND THEIR CULTURE 55 
 
 individual are the chief preoccupation of the citizen's 
 mind. When talking to savages of to-day it is baffling 
 to find how shrewd they are up to a certain point in 
 weighing the characters of individuals of another race, 
 and how vague they are in identifying individuals of 
 their own. Many men in a tribe will have the same 
 name without apparently being troubled by confusion. 
 Within the tribe, except to the members of his own 
 family, one man is much the same as another unless he 
 holds a definite office. The primitive man is principally 
 concerned with differences of sex, and the primitive 
 artist caricatures these with an emphasis which the 
 modern philistine considers obscene. 
 
 Side by side with refined artistic feeling and high 
 technical skill in execution of works of art, we find an 
 extremely primitive style of living. The Cro-Magnon 
 men seem to have lived largely at any rate in caves, and 
 appear to have kept domesticated animals under their 
 control, though some authorities dispute this, asserting 
 that they were hunters only, and that the lines which 
 appear to represent halters on the heads of horses are 
 wrongly interpreted.-^ But apparently they had no 
 need to cultivate plants and developed no system of 
 agriculture. They made little if any earthenware 
 pottery; and though their barbed spears of horn and 
 bone are well finished, their stone implements are roughly 
 chipped and not polished. Apparently they did not 
 work hard, probably because they had no need to ; but 
 they adorned themselves with elaborate tattooing or 
 painting, and wore garments of skins and ornaments, 
 such as necklaces of shells pierced and strung. 
 
 Further knowledge of the Cro-Magnon race would 
 
 ^Various sections of the human species undoubtedly lost and rediscovered 
 the horse repeatedly during the passage of ages.
 
 56 EXTINCT SPECIES AND RACES OF MAN 
 
 be very valuable. It would be intensely interesting to 
 know what they wrought in perishable materials, how 
 they lived, how far their art grew out of their leisure, 
 and how far it contributed to their mental growth, as 
 in no small measure it must have done, both by training 
 the observation and giving standards for work, and 
 also by stimulating contrivance while imposing restraint 
 upon mechanical execution. But the greatest problem 
 of all, a problem whose solution may contain the key 
 to human fate, is the problem of their disappearance. 
 Why did these men with large brains in well-shaped 
 heads, with powerful physique and acute perceptions, 
 with unsurpassed skill in artistic production, falter and 
 stop in their career of achievement and vanish, leaving 
 mankind to start afresh ? Just as they became extinct 
 and their blood cannot be traced in surviving races, 
 so, too, did their accomplishments die with them. Their 
 art came to an end, and even the stone weapons of the 
 men who came after them were made in a different way.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND NUMBERS 
 DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 
 
 After the last ice age the races which form the foundation of the 
 earth's present population began to establish themselves in the localities 
 they occupy to-day. 
 
 The road by which man reached his present dominant position is 
 largely a matter of conjecture. 
 
 At first man had to struggle for existence against nature. He 
 succeeded by forming co-operative societies. 
 
 Later, men found their enemies not in nature but in the men of 
 rival communities. 
 
 Natural selection improved man through the competition between 
 communities. 
 
 A community gained in strength in proportion as it — 
 
 (a) divided its work and specialized its workers, 
 
 [b] concentrated control under a central authority, 
 
 (r) improved discipline and fostered the self-devotion of 
 
 individuals, 
 (^) suppressed strife between its members, 
 (^) increased mutual help and protection. 
 Experience of the needs of the community gave rise to the national 
 religion. 
 
 As a result of ages of tribal strife, man has occupied every habitable 
 locality. 
 
 Hence he has — 
 
 (a) developed habits differing widely according to local 
 
 conditions, 
 (^) by the need of local adaptation become diversified into 
 various races with peculiar characteristics, combining 
 again to form mixed populations,
 
 58 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 (r) by exchanging the produce and discoveries of diverse 
 environments increased the sum of human power far 
 beyond the needs felt in each particular locality. 
 
 HAVING traced one species of man from an 
 uncertain origin to an unexplained extinc- 
 tion, and one branch of the existing human 
 species from a course of advancing development in its 
 mode of life to a comparatively sudden and no more 
 definitely explained disappearance, we have to go back 
 to pick up the trail of yet other races in order to follow 
 them to the same point and if may be further. There 
 seems to be quite satisfactory evidence that man of the 
 Thames Valley type was in Europe before the Cro- 
 Magnon race, but little is known of him or of other 
 races elsewhere. The real occupation of Europe by 
 the Mediterranean race along the south and west, the 
 northern race in the north-east, and the Alpine race 
 across the Central Uplands, came later, the three races 
 establishing themselves successively in the order named. 
 Where these races were developing before we find them 
 invading Europe, and how early their invasion began, is 
 not yet known ; for though the Thames Valley man 
 appears allied to the Mediterranean man, he was ahead 
 of the main invasion. Somewhere, no doubt, t^ey 
 were multiplying, though their entry into Europe was 
 more likely due to climatic changes affecting the whole 
 earth than to the pressure of numbers behind them. 
 That was not a factor which had begun to affect mankind 
 as yet. 
 
 Moving from a land which was becoming less habit- 
 able to a land which was growing more attractive as 
 the cold receded northwards, they found themselves 
 faced by novel conditions which required adaptive 
 response. This would have the double effect of stimu-
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 59 
 
 lating contrivance and of eliminating the less versatile 
 types. Then different problems to those which had 
 confronted the tall Cro-Magnon men were attacked 
 and solved by other smaller, more numerous, and more 
 interdependent men. These men had to develop a 
 manner of life suitable in the north to forest country, 
 in the south to land fertile between recurring droughts, 
 and in the centre to upland pastures ; and many ages 
 had to pass before they found time to devote in security 
 to the arts. The versatility of these peoples was in 
 the end equal to the task, and pastoral and agricultural 
 populations grew up with patriarchal and tribal organiza- 
 tions varying to meet the requirements of varying 
 conditions, and evolving along lines well known to anthro- 
 pologists. The mastery of man over his environment 
 was again secured, but by a method different to that of 
 the Cro-Magnon men. The day of men who lived in 
 caves, hunted animals, caught fish and picked berries 
 was passed away with the men who had thus found a 
 solution to the problem of existence ; and the day 
 had come when men must co-operate to cultivate the 
 land and tend flocks and herds, even though these 
 occupations left them at first less free for refined pursuits. 
 They could not draw or carve like their predecessors, 
 but they learnt to improve their stone tools and weapons 
 and also to polish them, which the Cro-Magnon men had 
 not done. Later they multiplied and became no longer 
 merely indigenous animals, but an occupying population. 
 It is at this point that another great step was made in 
 the development of human methods, a step which 
 contributed in the end to gaining for man, as a species, 
 dominance in the animal kingdom, but at the expense 
 of individual happiness. 
 
 There can hardly be room for doubt that during the
 
 6o THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 rise of the human group man had very little need to 
 compete against man. It was to nature that he looked 
 for spoil, and from nature that he feared danger. His 
 neighbours were too few and distant to be either feared 
 or robbed. Moreover, when entering into possession 
 of a land of apparently limitless resources, existence 
 was a happy, hand-to-mouth affair, and things readily 
 obtainable by all were not worth hoarding. This 
 meant that on the one hand there was little a tribe or 
 family could steal from its neighbours and little it need 
 protect from them ; while within the tribe or family 
 things in common use were common property. Races 
 like the negroes of tropical Africa, which, remaining in 
 a land where living is easy, retain many primitive char- 
 acteristics, still to a great extent take a communistic 
 view of property, and their thoughtless way of helping 
 themselves to whatever takes their fancy at the moment, 
 makes them appear to more advanced races incorrigible 
 thieves. This verdict is not quite fair to the negro in 
 his earlier intercourse with white men before an incom- 
 prehensible civihzation for which he has no capacity 
 has demorahzed him. The negro who appropriates 
 his master's razor to cut up the antelopes he shoots, or 
 supplements his attire with garments from his master's 
 wardrobe on occasions when he wishes to look smart, is 
 acting naturally and correctly according to his own 
 standards. Unfortunately his instincts and theory of 
 conduct are not changed by a few explanations or even 
 punishments, and he long remains uncertain about the 
 ownership of food or articles within the establishment to 
 which he belongs. So far as we have traced human 
 development in this brief review, man has in the main 
 been the indispensable complement of man, and men 
 have held their own against nature by mutual help.
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 6i 
 
 man's relation to the rest of nature being so far closely 
 parallel to that which may be studied in the baboons of 
 to-day. We are now coming to a stage when man has 
 to such an extent subdued nature that he sees his chief 
 obstacle and danger in the rivalry of other men. 
 
 It is possible, as I have suggested above, that this 
 stage may have been reached before. The disappear- 
 ance of the Neanderthal species and the Cro-Magnon 
 race may mean that each of them fell under direct or 
 indirect competition amongst themselves or with other 
 men. But in the transition from neolithic to recent 
 times we can see, for the first time unmistakably, the 
 shaping influence of human competition. In propor- 
 tion as human communities grew numerous and increased 
 in size the stress of life increased, also even if there was 
 enough for all it was not all equally good and equally 
 accessible. Man, especially in childhood, does not like 
 waiting for his turn. Herdsmen found it worth while 
 to strive with one another for the possession of the 
 wells where they watered their beasts in a drought. 
 The agriculturalists found it necessary to beat off 
 marauders who, endeavouring to seize the fruits that 
 had been cultivated and brought to maturity, would 
 have fed themselves with the products of other people's 
 toil. Man, in gaining his control over nature, had 
 interposed human labour between the production by 
 nature and the consumption by man. The stone had 
 to be shaped and hafted to serve as a weapon or tool, 
 the beasts had to be tended and the ground cultivated 
 to ensure a food supply for the community. A man 
 like any other animal had at times to make sure of 
 getting enough for himself when there was not enough 
 for all, and in proportion to the increasing demands 
 production made upon his toil, he became aware of the
 
 62 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 advantages of consuming what others had produced. 
 Hence the struggle for existence and the struggle for 
 luxury between man and man arose to work further 
 chancres in the human species and its character and 
 mode of life. Man had found the need for capital. 
 
 By this time the use of other animals and of mechanical 
 appliances may be considered to have been estabhshed, 
 no matter in how elementary a form, but the principle 
 of human co-operation was as yet very imperfect. As, 
 however, the pressure of life was raised the need for 
 individual restraint grew. The individual who en- 
 deavoured to secure advantage for himself at the expense 
 of other members of the community to which he belonged, 
 or who tried to evade making his personal contribution 
 towards maintaining the safety of the community 
 when it had to hold its own against the rest of nature, 
 was a source of weakness to the unit apart from which 
 he could not exist. The thief and the idler, the brawler 
 and the coward, no less than the weakling, had to be 
 ehminated from the community, this principle remaining 
 the foundation of criminal law to this day ; and the 
 community which could not count on the forbearance, 
 industry and devotion — devotion shown both by watch- 
 fulness and courage — of its members might be able to 
 maintain its gregarious existence in a sheltered environ- 
 ment for a time, but it was most certainly doomed as 
 soon as it came into competition with a community 
 whose members had attained a uniformly higher standard 
 in social virtues. When the instinctive individualism, 
 so generally noticeable in the primate stock to which 
 man belongs, is borne in mind, it can well be believed 
 that tens of thousands of years spent in remorseless 
 selection by unceasing conflict were necessary to evolve 
 communities, each member of which was willing to put
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 63 
 
 the welfare of the community before his own advantage 
 and, if destruction threatened, before his own safety. 
 The instinct to protect mate and offspring goes far 
 back in mammaHan history, and the elaboration of this 
 into tribal life, an arrangement ensuring greater safety 
 than family life, no doubt goes far back in the history 
 of the human group. But to bring tribal instinct to 
 perfection and make co-operation on a great scale 
 possible, the common enemy, against which the men of 
 the community combined, had to be something more 
 incalculable than inanimate nature, more dangerous 
 than the less versatile animals ; in fact the standard 
 of the human community could only be raised by a 
 struggle for survival with other human communities. 
 This contest became inevitable as soon as man's control 
 over his environment enabled him to defeat the checks 
 nature had imposed on his rapid multiplication ; and 
 was no less bound to result in new developments for the 
 human species, since it was the only method of selection 
 to which mankind as then existing had not been sub- 
 jected. 
 
 The lines along which this new method worked are 
 not hard to trace. The versatility which came to 
 compensate for lack of specialization in the motor and 
 sensory mechanism of the body had before this led to a 
 variety in the indi^ iduals of the same tribe and even 
 the same family. This, while it has contributed very 
 largely to the ultimate triumph of the species, has been 
 a source of bewilderment and discontent to the bulk 
 of mankind for ages. Among mammals, apart from 
 complementary sexual differences, there must be a 
 uniformity of faculties in all individuals of the same 
 species. An individual which, even by a little in even 
 a single quality, falls short of the average of its species
 
 64 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 cannot maintain its hold on life. A beast of prey which 
 falls short of effectiveness in sensing its quarry, killing 
 it, or digesting it, must starve. In animals which hunt 
 in troops, and in ruminants which associate in herds, 
 there is more scope for complementary variety; but 
 even among these the standard of efficiency is a dead 
 level when compared with that of man. But among 
 the children of the same human parents one brother 
 may excel in devising new weapons, but be incapable 
 of using them ; another may be dexterous in using them, 
 but helpless at devising them ; while a third, who can 
 neither plan weapons nor use them, may have a faculty 
 fof fashioning them under direction which is almost 
 lacking in the brother who designs and the brother 
 who uses them. We have to go to the invertebrates 
 to find among the ants and kindred insects a parallel 
 for this complementary diversity. Even here the 
 parallel is more apparent than real, for it is based upon 
 structural differences. The social insects determine 
 according to the needs of the community whether an 
 individual shall develop the structure as well as the 
 instincts of a worker, a soldier or a breeder ; while in 
 the human community only the most enlightened 
 observers can discover the highest aptitudes of the 
 individual behind an almost complete uniformity of 
 externals. So great is the difficulty of discovering 
 peculiar aptitudes that these are to a great extent 
 disregarded in view of the certainty of general versatility. 
 Individuals are specialized by training so that a sufficient 
 number is produced of the different classes — of thinkers, 
 leaders, and workers — which the community requires. 
 As a rule, even in highly organized communities only 
 haphazard and perfunctory efforts are directed to the 
 discovery of individual peculiarities. This is partly,
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 65 
 
 no doubt, because the proportion of individuals who 
 have one special power markedly in excess of their general 
 versatility and capacity for education, is very small. 
 In the prevailing absence of discriminating advisers the 
 advanced community usually educates individuals and 
 allots tasks according to the work to be done, not to the 
 capacity of the individual worker. Thus, while on the 
 one hand misdirected education often by thwarting 
 the natural bent of an exceptionally specialized individual 
 reduces to uselessness one who should become of excep- 
 tional value, on the other hand attempts to push develop- 
 ment, in cases where the aptitude has been correctly 
 guessed, sometimes succeed only in making the victim 
 loathe the thing he is naturally best fitted to do. 
 
 In the history of the species, conscious attempts 
 at special education come fairly late. Yet all the time 
 there was the fact that one man could sling stones with 
 more deadly effect than any other member of his tribe, 
 and another found the enemy's heads most easily damaged 
 by a heavy club. The fact that men did by preference 
 what came easiest to each of them, led to specialization 
 and increased the effectiveness of the tribe as a whole ; 
 but there can hardly be a doubt that diversity of func- 
 tion came long before conscious attempts to apportion 
 duties. Nature compelled a considerable division of 
 labour before man consciously adopted and tried to 
 develop the principle. The men of the tribe would 
 naturally go after the big prizes from physical promptings 
 of necessity ; and the women take charge of the food, 
 preparing and cooking the spoils of the chase, and 
 cultivating useful plants near their dwellings, because 
 such occupations would not interfere with their maternal 
 duties as must work which would take them further 
 afield. The beginnings of organization came doubtless 
 5
 
 66 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 in bringing up the children to be useful. For instance, 
 whilst initiating boys into the mysteries of herding 
 cattle or hunting game it became necessary to do more 
 than develop a natural instinct, as a cat does when she 
 brings a half-stupefied mouse to her kittens. This 
 process had to develop until the elders learned to re- 
 press individualism and carelessness in the boys which 
 would spoil their concerted movements. Up to this 
 point the development of human organization does not 
 go further than that of other animals, being dependent 
 upon restricted competition between man and man and 
 the community's battle for existence against nature. 
 
 When the struggle for existence came to be for man 
 a struggle for advantage between human communities, 
 the time for an essential change was reached. The 
 novelty consisted in organization and control, not 
 merely of the women and children, but of the adult 
 males of the tribe. Where similar conditions of environ- 
 ment produced, after the elimination of inferior and 
 backward types, tribes whose control over nature 
 brought them to approximately equal numbers, the 
 tribe which evolved the highest discipline would outclass 
 its competitors. Not only would its discipline make 
 it more formidable in war, but internal control would 
 make for cohesion and the growth of numbers. Perhaps 
 the most important step taken by man in his advance 
 towards dominance was the concentration of control 
 over the many in the hands of a few. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that this was a sudden 
 discovery or a policy adopted by design. The right to 
 command and the duty of obedience are late concep- 
 tions. The first step towards them is initiative in one 
 of a crowd. Wherever a number of individuals are 
 co-operating for a common object, real progress only
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 67 
 
 begins when the many begin to distrust their independent 
 judgment and look for a lead, and the one is found with 
 the self-confidence — a thing not necessarily identical 
 with exceptional intelligence — to give it. The earliest 
 commanders gave signals rather than orders, for as yet 
 discipline was unknown. In shifting a heavy stone or 
 launching a big canoe, it would be " All ready ? To- 
 gether now ! Heave ! " Or in war the leader's order 
 to charge was most likely issued as advice : " Now's 
 our chance : come on," while the order to retire was 
 no doubt often given by personal example. When the 
 tribe's growing confidence in its prowess led it to resist 
 an organized attack the order, " Stand to arms " would 
 be a warning, " Look out, here they come." But again 
 organized warfare" is a late development. Primitive 
 races hate open fighting. Discipline, co-ordination, and 
 mutual confidence had to grow through a long period, 
 during which the men of a tribe learnt to overwhelm 
 a single beast in the chase, to kidnap a stray woman 
 from their neighbours, and to ambush enemies very 
 much fewer in numbers than themselves, before there 
 first took place a pitched battle in the open between 
 two tribes, each of which welcomed the encounter in 
 the belief that it would be victorious. 
 
 As the advantages of discipline were felt, if not 
 consciously perceived, the tribe with the best signalman 
 and the most obedient rank and file would begin to eat 
 up its neighbours, mainly by killing off their men and 
 capturing their women. Eventually the importance 
 of the signalman would lead to the foundation of a 
 recognized office which would be desired by all for its 
 perquisites, its opportunities, and the power it gave 
 its holder of choosing the safest and most advantageous 
 position in times of conflict. It would be an office
 
 68 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 which the strongest would try to seize, and the tribe 
 as a whole would wish to allot to the man in whose 
 sagacity it had the greatest confidence. In course of 
 time the signalman would become in reality a king, with 
 the power to enforce obedience and to dispose of the 
 members of the tribe as his conception of strategy 
 should require ; while during the same period the many 
 would have become habituated to rehance on a central 
 authority and repressive towa''ds initiative in the wrong 
 place. Thus the foundations of government were laid. 
 The continued existence of a community depends 
 on its power to beat its rivals. It is essentially the 
 same whether the rivals attack and have to be beaten 
 off, or whether their near presence is so irksome or their 
 possessions so desirable that they have to be attacked. 
 The nations of to-day no less than the savage tribes of 
 the remote past exist in virtue of their ability to organize 
 themselves for the struggle for existence. The organiza- 
 tion in face of rivals depends on what we now call 
 patriotism. Patriotism is a nation's instinct of self- 
 preservation, manifested in the individuals of which the 
 nation is composed by an instinctive readiness for self- 
 sacrifice where the interests of the nation are concerned.^ 
 But patriotism which is concerned with any danger 
 threatening the community from without, needs as its 
 complement a form of self-restraint, within the com- 
 munity, for which we have no such definite name. 
 ' Citizenship ' perhaps comes nearest to expressing what 
 we mean. The main point is this, that in order that a 
 community may carry on the struggle for existence 
 with success against other communities, the component 
 members must suppress the struggle for existence between 
 
 ' I have made this the subject of a special study, published under the title of 
 ••Patriotism" by Messrs. Bell & Son, 191 1.
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 69 
 
 themselves. Only by maintaining a balance between 
 the capacity for waging war without and maintaining 
 peace within its frontiers can a nation ensure its survival. 
 In the early days of man's struggle with nature 
 the community was small, and though there was no 
 doubt frequent quarrelling, as there is to-day in a troop 
 of monkeys or a pack of wolves, the members had grown 
 or were growing up together and knew their respective 
 levels fairly well. Rivalry between two members, whose 
 strength was so nearly equal that its eventual settlement 
 involved the death or expulsion of one of them, was 
 rare, and usually meant the supplanting of an old leader 
 by a younger one. But when the growing severity of 
 the conditions of life required the maintenance of large 
 communities with many adult males, it became necessary 
 to prevent any dispute, which might arise, from being 
 settled in a way which would destroy or impair the 
 general efficiency of either of the disputants. A warrior, 
 who quarrels with another warrior of the tribe, knows 
 that if he kills or cripples him he will be without his 
 help in the next conflict with the neighbouring tribe ; 
 and if in the exasperation of the moment he is liable 
 to forget this, the other members of the tribe for their 
 common good restrain him. Duels between animals 
 of the same species, particularly gregarious animals of 
 the same herd, very rarely end fatally. It might be 
 to the advantage of an individual to kill all his rivals, 
 but by so doing he would weaken the herd and end by 
 perishing with it. Consequently we find natural selec- 
 tion has made the weapons of male animals which fight 
 with one another almost harmless against each other. 
 The antlers of a stag may be deadly weapons against a 
 wolf ; but when two stags engage in their periodic 
 contests for the females, their antlers do not inflict
 
 70 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 wounds, but interlock and allow them to wrestle harm- 
 lessly until the exhaustion of one leaves the other a 
 victor. It is not necessary to give further instances of 
 this principle : they will occur in numbers to the reader's 
 mind. It is different, however, with man. The primitive 
 and unspecialized structure of man leaves him without 
 natural weapons. He has had, therefore, to make good 
 this deficiency by his nervous versatility, and the earliest 
 way in which his intelligence showed itself was in pro- 
 viding himself weapons of wood and stone. As natural 
 selection could not ensure these weapons being effective 
 against warriors of other tribes and harmless against 
 those of his own, we find the men who survive are 
 those who have the restraint to use their weapons only 
 against enemies outside the group to which they belong. 
 But such restraint is more than can be expected from 
 the individual. The individual is swayed by a far 
 more primitive instinct than is the tribe collectively, 
 and tries to beat his rival as effectively as he can. The 
 restraint had to come from outside, in this case from 
 the community, which had need of both disputants, 
 and this acted in the direction of strengthening tribal 
 Hfe. 
 
 Once again, however, we must be careful not to 
 anticipate. A large and powerful community is able 
 to exercise very effective control over its individual 
 members ; but during the earlier stages of its growth 
 it had to rely more on what the individual would con- 
 cede than on what it could enforce. When two of the 
 principal warriors of a small tribe quarrelled, their 
 fellows had not the collective strength to compel them 
 to arrange their differences. One had to go, and, as 
 it was to the interest of the tribe that the member 
 which it must lose should be the less useful of the two,
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 71 
 
 they were encouraged to fight it out. Duels of this 
 kind survive in some armies to this day. As the tribe 
 increased in numbers and the individuals decreased 
 in importance, it became more and more possible to 
 regulate disputes, first by insisting on fair play, then by 
 forbidding a contest with any but blunt and non-fatal 
 weapons, then by leaving it to the chief — the military 
 director of the tribe — to decide which warrior was of 
 most use to him and which must yield or if necessary 
 be sacrificed. In this way a process of selection went 
 on within the tribe. When at last tribes had grown 
 so that the numbers were large and the disputants rela- 
 tively insignificant, it eventually became more important 
 to satisfy general opinion and thereby build up a sense 
 of personal security than to draw fine distinctions between 
 the prowess of individual warriors ; and then followed a 
 stage when the tribe directed its ingenuity to attempt- 
 ing to settle the dispute according to the merits of 
 the question at issue, not the personal qualities of the 
 combatants. Thus a system of justice grows up. 
 
 The evolution of a system of justice has been begun 
 and developed again and again by different communities, 
 and, long after the principle of deciding disputes accord- 
 ing to equity has been formally adopted, the practice 
 of favouring the more important member of the tribe 
 has survived in some form or other. Sometimes the 
 onus of deciding was thrown on the tribal god and lots 
 were drawn to ascertain his will, sometimes the relative 
 wealth of the litigants became in some way the deciding 
 factor. To this day there has not arisen a nation in 
 which equity is the sole consideration in the settlement 
 of disputes ; for, though the voice of the doctrinaire 
 may be convincing, the power of nature is overwhelming, 
 and the professed wishes of the community to place
 
 72 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 equit}' before expediency can only be fulfilled so far as 
 the exigencies of nature will allow. 
 
 There is one more factor in the make up of a human 
 community. I have mentioned the defensive attitude 
 against nature without and the repressive attitude 
 towards strife within. The third element is a spirit 
 of mutual help. If one member of a tribe is wounded 
 or sick, or has lost his property by fire or thieves, the 
 community must recognize that the misfortune of the 
 individual is the misfortune of the whole tribe. If his 
 neighbours took advantage of his momentary weakness 
 they would weaken the tribe. It is to the best interests 
 of the tribe not merely to show forbearance, but to help 
 him to regain his strength and effectiveness as soon as 
 possible. This, of course, is really an extension of the 
 principle of repressing the struggle for existence within 
 the community. Within its borders it becomes the 
 object of the community not to promote the survival 
 of the fittest, but to fit as many as possible to survive. 
 It need not be supposed that this was a deliberate 
 poHcy consciously adopted : it no doubt grew naturally 
 out of family life and the habits entailed by a long 
 infancy and adolescence. Had it been adopted too 
 early it would have retarded the improvement of the 
 stock. Later, undoubtedly, it aided in strengthening 
 the community. Later still, as we shall see, the policy 
 developed into a habit of preserving the degenerate 
 and weakly as well as those temporarily disabled, and 
 had a deteriorating effect. 
 
 As the ages passed and the tribe grew into the nation, 
 large in numbers and complex in organization, a bond 
 was required to co-ordinate the numerous and often 
 perplexing principles which governed national life. 
 This co-ordinating bond also grew naturally out of the
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 73 
 
 conditions of time and place. Man's capacity for 
 understanding himself and the forces of nature grew 
 slowly, and his solution of the problems which faced him 
 was often grotesque. It was probably late in his history 
 that he learnt to distinguish at all clearly between the 
 material world of his senses and the spirit world of his 
 dreams and fancies ; or to divide causes of events into 
 the two groups which he afterwards came to call 
 natural and supernatural. But in time the nation 
 grew to recognize a system whose success testified to 
 some divine sanction, and, identifying this with a peculiar 
 god or pantheon of its own, unconsciously organized 
 ceremonial, and, entrusting it to a branch of its civil 
 service, discovered that it had a religion. 
 
 During tens of thousands of years the evolution of 
 the human community went on without observers or 
 direct records. It is probably only some ten to twelve 
 thousand years ago that the process began to blossom 
 into the period of which a precise history can be de- 
 ciphered. Before attempting to follow the human 
 species through this period it will be well to review 
 the position that it had then reached. 
 
 In neolithic times the modern or surviving type of 
 man has spread over the whole of the habitable world, 
 with the possible exception of a few inaccessible islands, 
 and he has adopted everywhere a mode of life which has 
 enabled him to multiply up to the limits of his accom- 
 modation. His advance in complexity of life has not 
 been uniform, for at many stages groups have established 
 themselves in forest, swamp, and mountain where their 
 further evolution not being necessary they have been 
 left behind by those whom the pressure of circumstances 
 compelled to go further in development. But no 
 matter what the different localities have demanded of
 
 74 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 him, man has taken possession of them, and the occupa- 
 tion being based on stable ways, he cannot now migrate 
 easily. This general occupation of the lands has had 
 three effects which influence the history of the species 
 profoundly. Firstly, men settled in different conditions 
 of climate and physical environment must of necessity 
 solve the problems of life in totally different ways. 
 Men living on wide grassy steppes will be carrying on 
 a pastoral existence, wandering in an eternal journey 
 through the cycle of feeding grounds visited by their 
 flocks and herds ; while at the other end of the scale 
 men in an archipelago will be spending a large part of 
 their lives in boats on the sea. Where the earth is 
 suitable to agriculture, or forest-country encourages 
 the hunter, yet other communities will live, maintain- 
 ing themselves in ways which would be incompre- 
 hensible to their neighbours of the plains or islands. 
 The Eskimo in the Arctic, the Frenchman in Paris, 
 and the negro in an African swamp find one another 
 incomprehensible even to-day. 
 
 But the adoption of different habitations, entailing 
 different habits, is inextricably associated with physical 
 adaptation to the particular locality. The one great 
 natural advantage which man possesses is his versatility, 
 and this very quality stands in the way of marked 
 structural changes. The type of hands and limbs and 
 teeth do not need altering ; but divergent adaptation 
 to climatic differences and changes is essential to animals 
 straying into countries of opposite character. Apart 
 from the unlikeness in the diet available on the steppes 
 of Russia and in the swamps of the Congo, the difference 
 in the temperature and humidity of the air make the 
 regulation of the body heat and the excretion of 
 waste products by the skin and kidneys widely different
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 75 
 
 functions in such dissimilar situations. Physiological 
 adaptation follows naturally, compelled by natural 
 selection, and, when established, tends to keep races 
 tied to definite localities. This, however, is not all. 
 The segregation of human races does not depend entirely 
 on the direct physiological influence of climate. In- 
 digenous micro-organisms, both animal and vegetable, 
 treat the tissues of newly arrived animals as fresh pabulum 
 in which to gain a lodgment and start growth. Until 
 mutual tolerance has been acquired, zymotic disease is 
 at work repressing the activity of the invaders. Where 
 in a given land a strain of mankind has through a long 
 period been evolved which is in equilibrium with the 
 more primitive fauna and flora, later immigrants are 
 likely to be repelled by strange and deadly diseases ; 
 for the native men have developed tolerance for their 
 constant enemies, and the local germs have increased 
 in virulence for the general human tissues. 
 
 Thus in the course of time selection in remote 
 localities offering widely diverse conditions led to the 
 segregation of distinct strains, and man became a type 
 of a polymorphic species : a joy and despair to Mendelian 
 enthusiasts. Later wanderings and conquests and the 
 increasing complexity of life produced the mixed 
 populations on which civilization depends with all 
 its perplexities. 
 
 At the present day man is essentially polymorphic, 
 and exists everywhere in / mixed populations.' It is 
 often denied that there are any ' pure races ' now. 
 The subject is a very difficult one ; for large mixed 
 populations have fundamental affinities and can become 
 isolated and diverge in bulk. In this sense it is correct 
 and convenient to speak of human ' races ' to-day. 
 By the Anglo-Saxon race we mean a very mixed popula-
 
 76 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 tion held together by most complex bonds. The 
 Japanese race is no more a homogeneous biological 
 entity than the Anglo-Saxon. Attempts to distinguish 
 between an English and a German race, or between a 
 Japanese and a Chinese race, lead biologically to con- 
 fusion. Though, if we know exactly in what sense the 
 terms are used, they may be convenient. Yet there is 
 a true biological difference between the whole mixed 
 population of the Japanese islands and of Great Britain 
 which may be called racial. There is a wide difference 
 between the biological constitution of the mixed popula- 
 tions of England and India, though both are claimed to 
 be peopled by branches of the ' Aryan race.' If we 
 restrict the use of the word ' race ' to the mixed popula- 
 tions of district geographical areas, we may use it to 
 describe true biological entities, produced by independent 
 evolution along diverging lines. Intermingling of 
 ' different races ' may produce recognizable biological 
 effects, for a recombination of factors when brought 
 about by the crossing of widely divergent strains some- 
 times results in the reconstruction of types too primitive 
 to fit into any modern community. The moral de- 
 ficiencies so often to be deplored in ' half-castes ' are 
 no doubt a reversion to a mental condition from which 
 the parent races made their escape by discarding different 
 encumbrances. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the way in which certain 
 other animals, through their association with man, have 
 likewise been split up into polymorphic species, and with 
 the growth of human civilization have likewise been 
 liable to form mixed populations. Speaking of the 
 dog, Darwin says : " The existence of a single race, 
 remarkably constant in form during the whole Neolithic 
 period, is an interesting fact in contrast with what we
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE ^^ 
 
 see of the changes which the races underwent during 
 the period of the successive Egyptian monuments, and 
 in contrast with our existing dogs." Here again we 
 may see the recombination of very divergent stocks 
 produce animals too primitive to be compatible with 
 our civiHzation. The all-round sagacity of mongrels 
 has often been contrasted with the specialized instincts 
 of particular breeds, and what we unsympathetically 
 describe as ' curs ' have at times a mental equipment 
 too complete to leave room for dependence on human 
 patronage. 
 
 Consequent upon its dispersion we find the human 
 species divided up into different races or strains, and 
 these strains firmly rooted in different lands to which 
 they are fitted by physical adaptation. Long ages 
 pass, and the human stock with which continents are 
 populated remains unchanged. Within historical times 
 hordes of men from an overpopulated area have been 
 known to start upon a career of conquest, and after their 
 adventure has come to an exhausted end the lands they 
 have for a time overrun show hardly appreciable traces 
 of them in their population. Slow changes in climate, 
 insidious alterations in the food supply, and the steady 
 overflow of a constantly expanding population from a 
 restricted area, will work permanent changes amongst the 
 collective races of mankind ; but apart from these in- 
 fluences, both the mode of life and the place of abode 
 tend to remain stable for the various sections of mankind 
 over immense periods of time. 
 
 There remains the third result of the filling up of 
 the world with men. Besides fixed habitations in 
 differing environments inducing differing modes of life, 
 besides various conditions leading to modification of 
 distinct races and formation of mixed populations,
 
 78 THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 there came into being a habit of interchange of spoils 
 between distinct races ; a practice of borrowing, barter- 
 ing, thieving, and imitating wherever neighbouring 
 communities came in contact. For instance, Goddard 
 says, in writing about the North American Indians: 
 " We are told by the Coronado writers and by Espejo 
 that the nomadic peoples of the plains and of the 
 mountains of the south-west brought the meat and the 
 hides of buffalo and deer to the pueblos and exchanged 
 them for mantles of cotton and for corn. This exchange 
 of products allowed one people to concentrate upon 
 agriculture and the other upon hunting, yet each to have 
 both corn and meat for food, and cotton cloth and dressed 
 skins for clothing." To-day we call the same thing 
 trade, only trade does not express it all. Neighbours 
 obtain from each other not only their surplus produce, 
 but also ideas. The men who first discovered how to 
 work metals were copied by their neighbours who had 
 hitherto made implements only of stone, just as Asiatic 
 nations, who manufacture firearms to-day, did not perfect 
 them for themselves, but derived them from European 
 races. 
 
 The inventiveness of man is very limited after all. 
 Every race of men does not pass through an ordered 
 sequence of discoveries from rough stone to tempered 
 steel. Different conditions give rise to differing needs 
 in differing races, and leads to the evolution of different 
 aptitudes. The broad physical uniformity of the modern 
 species of man is liable to overshadow the differences 
 between race and race and between man and man within 
 the races. There came a stage when these differences 
 became one of the chief factors in modifying human 
 life. These differences are important again as the 
 main corrective to specialization of races in particular
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 79 
 
 environments with consequent loss of adaptability. 
 Two races would live side by side and one invent bronze 
 weapons, while the other found no need for anything 
 better than stone. The conservatism of the stone men 
 would have nothing to say to the bronze weapons : 
 would neither imitate nor buy them. Then the inno- 
 vators gave their backward neighbours a practical lesson 
 in the advantages of bronze by overrunning them and 
 introducing bronze for their own purposes. Before 
 long the conquerors disappeared. They represented 
 only a restless surplus of their own people whose strength 
 lay in their weapons not in their numbers, and their 
 unfitness for the land they had conquered, their sus- 
 ceptibility to unfamiliar diseases, and their inability 
 to escape absorption in the mass of the indigenes pre- 
 vented their invasion from having any lasting effect 
 on the population. They vanished, but they left their 
 victims the richer by a knowledge of bronze. This, of 
 course, is merely a sketch of the principle. Abundant 
 instances of its working in modern times are available 
 for study, in the spread of firearms, the introduction of 
 the horse, and later the war-chariot into Europe and 
 Egypt from the East, the spread of various successful 
 principles of military tactics from different centres, 
 and, perhaps most interesting of all, the gradual extension 
 of the Roman system of law and discipline throughout 
 the Mediterranean. The details in each case differ. 
 Sometimes the invaders succeeded in establishing 
 themselves on the scene of their conquest. According to 
 some authorities it was the Alpine race which introduced 
 metal working into Europe from the East. Sometimes 
 they held their own long enough to destroy more than 
 they introduced. It is hardly too much to say that the 
 Spaniards did this when they conquered Mexico and
 
 8o THE GROWTH OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 
 Peru by means of their firearms and horses. Sometimes 
 an invention does not become rooted in a new soil, but 
 establishes only a new trade need, in which case those 
 who adopt it, not being physiologically prepared for it, 
 may derive more harm than good. The early intro- 
 duction, as beverages, of potent forms of alcohol into 
 America and the typical region of Africa are instances of 
 this. 
 
 It will be seen at once what an immense influence 
 this habit of exchange and adoption, voluntary or 
 involuntary, must have had upon the development of 
 the species. It involves, on the one hand, a further 
 advance of human power over nature, beyond the need 
 of human requirement; while, on the other hand, it 
 places an obstacle in the way of too close a specializa- 
 tion for a particular locality, and thereby fosters the 
 characteristic human versatility and retards physical 
 divergences. The human population of a particular 
 district might be able to maintain itself in equilibrium 
 with nature by means of stone implements, and, not 
 experiencing the need of metal, never adopt its use if 
 it did not receive instruction in the working and use 
 of metal from a neighbour whose needs and oppor- 
 tunities were different. Having adopted the use of 
 metal, the equilibrium with nature, which had formerly 
 been maintained with nothing better than chipped 
 stone, would be altered very considerably in favour of 
 man. 
 
 Hence the filling up of the earth with men has led 
 to the following results : fixation in definite localities 
 of populations differing from one another in slight 
 physiological specialization for life in each particular 
 locality ; development of the control over nature by 
 the concentration of each community upon the problems
 
 NUMBERS DURING THE NEOLITHIC AGE 8i 
 
 of life presented by its peculiar circumstances ; and 
 interchange of local products and experience, with 
 the result that large sections of mankind have been 
 raised to a superiority over the general conditions of 
 life far beyond anything their immediate needs would 
 have taught them. Although in vast areas of the 
 earth's surface sections of the human species have 
 become isolated and held until recently little or no 
 intercourse with each other, and the balance between 
 man and nature is very dissimilar in these various 
 areas, man as a species had undoubtedly become the 
 dominant animal in the world by the time when the 
 historic period opens. 
 
 Here one may pause. In this chapter and the pre- 
 ceding one I have endeavoured to trace the route by 
 which one species of the human group has survived to 
 become the dominant animal throughout the world. 
 The consequences of his period of supremacy I shall 
 endeavour to examine in the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 Man having conquered his environment, first learnt to live up to its 
 natural resources, then began trying to increase them by artificial 
 development. 
 
 Man passing from occupation to exploitation enabled the land to 
 support a larger population than in its undeveloped state, thus evolving 
 civilization. 
 
 Civilization is a recent phase. 
 
 A new order arises where predatory and vegetative races react on 
 each other. 
 
 Civilization is essentially a slavery. 
 
 Slavery improved the population by substituting individual selection 
 for competition of communities. 
 
 Masters and slaves eventually become merged in a common slavery 
 to the system they have built up. 
 
 There is a struggle for existence between civilizations. 
 
 Every system after growing to maturity decays. 
 
 Civilization arose independently in several isolated localities. 
 f*The fundamentals of civilization are uniform. Need for writing or 
 an equivalent is one of them. 
 
 Precision is impossible regarding the — 
 
 (a) place, 
 
 [b) time, 
 
 of civilized origins. 
 
 FOR a period that must be reckoned in hundreds 
 of thousands of years, man of the modern 
 type has been an inhabitant of the earth. 
 During the greater part of this time he lived as other 
 animals live, that is to say, maintaining a state of equili- 
 
 8i
 
 THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 83 
 
 brium with the natural forces of his environment. 
 Disease, climatic changes and other animals tended to 
 keep down his numbers ; but his natural fertility and 
 natural endowments limited and restored his losses. His 
 weakness, however, and his physical inadaptability fostered 
 his versatility. The practice of meeting his needs by 
 mental ingenuity was less dependent, for its development 
 and results, upon the direct stimulus of his immediate 
 environment than the capacity for bodily change, which 
 in other groups of animals has produced more specializa- 
 tion of structural form. Hence he eventually went 
 beyond maintaining a mere equilibrium, and established 
 an ascendancy in the world with a comfortable margin 
 of power to spare. This became the starting-point 
 for a new phase in the history of the species : man having 
 conquered his environment, began to alter and adapt it 
 to his needs. He had already learnt how to live up to 
 the resources of the land : he now set to work to increase 
 those resources to an extent that would support an 
 increased population. Onwards from a certain point in 
 his history we find man continually engaged in altering 
 the face of the territory he occupies, felling forests, 
 clearing bush, draining swamps, and either damming 
 streams or diverting their courses to irrigate deserts. 
 No longer content with the natural productivity of 
 the earth, we find him ploughing the soil and planting 
 useful vegetables, fencing in the animals he needs and 
 exterminating those he fears, and sometimes uncon- 
 sciously, sometimes with intention, improving both 
 plants and animals for his use. These operations, which 
 effect more or less directly an increase in the food 
 supply, are, however, only one half of the new activity. 
 The other half is concerned with the management 
 of the increased population which the altered territory
 
 84 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 supports ; and is concerned with the building of cities, 
 the making of roads and the digging of canals. All this 
 interference with the ordinary course of nature is only 
 made possible by a systematic regulation of life which 
 inevitably becomes very complex. The whole mode 
 of existence is summed up in the word ' civilization.' 
 
 In a civilization the economy of labour and material, 
 and the security of person and property, produce 
 conditions which permit art and science to flourish 
 and the elegances and refinements of human intercourse 
 to be observed. Sometimes the word ' civilization ' is 
 used to denote the mode of life of any human community 
 in which any artistic refinement or mechanical contriv- 
 ance can be detected, or in which any restraints upon 
 conduct are enforced ; the only distinction drawn 
 between civilizations being that some are styled ' higher ' 
 or ' lower ' than others. Hence we hear people speaking 
 of the Cro-Magnon civilization, and even referring to 
 the way in which the Neanderthal men lived long ago, 
 or the style in which the negroes, who build a few huts 
 in a huddled group between the giant trees of an African 
 forest, carry on existence at the present time, as civiliza- 
 tions. I think it would be better if the term ' civiliza- 
 tion ' were restricted to the mode of life in a territory 
 which is maintaining a larger population than could live 
 on the land if the people were not organized to develop 
 its resources. No one will deny that the relics of the 
 Cro-Magnon race show some of them to have been 
 individually men of intelligence and refinement, perhaps 
 equal in these respects to the civilized men of to-day. 
 But the land in which they lived does not yield evidence 
 that it was occupied by a population so dense as to need 
 high organization for obtaining the necessities of life 
 from the soil. They have left no clue to any process
 
 CIVILIZATION 85 
 
 by which they passed beyond occupation to exploitation 
 of the land. There are no ruined cities, or remains of 
 roads, canals, drains, mines, irrigation works, and no 
 evidence of a written language, without which the co- 
 ordination necessary for great engineering operations 
 is impossible. The manner in which the Cro-Magnon 
 men lived in palaeolithic times and the Babylonians lived 
 four thousand years ago, cannot be described with any 
 precision by the same word. 
 
 Using the term in the sense I have indicated, there 
 seems to have been no civilization until within the last 
 ten thousand or twelve thousand years. At times and 
 in places the human population became very numerous, 
 middens and burial-places witness to this, and such 
 monuments to concerted effort as Stonehenge show 
 that numbers and engineering ability were not wanting. 
 But great civihzations like those whose ruins remain in 
 Peru, Mexico, Egypt, the Euphrates Valley, India and 
 China had not come into being. They arose compara- 
 tively locally, comparatively recently, and comparatively 
 suddenly. They seem to have been called forth by new 
 conditions, and to mark a new phase in the history of 
 the species. 
 
 The period of civilization is distinctly a phase, for 
 the condition of man under civiHzation is comparatively 
 uniform. Civilizations are entities which arise, grow, 
 mature, decay, and are succeeded, not renewed ; and 
 the later civiHzations differ amazingly little in essentials, 
 details, or destiny from the earhest. So far the phase 
 falls naturally into two periods, but before discussing 
 these it is necessary to define more precisely what civi- 
 lization is and account for the way in which it arose. 
 
 The conditions preliminary to civilization were 
 reached at a time when the habitable parts of the
 
 86 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 earth had been filled up. When peoples became rooted 
 in the soil and the inequalities in the human species 
 locally intensified, characteristics tended to become 
 fixed. In some regions, such as mountains and deserts, 
 particular races of men became hardy and, from the 
 uncertainties and difficulties of gaining a livelihood, 
 unsettled and addicted to preying upon their neighbours. 
 In other regions, such as the fertile valleys of great 
 rivers, different peoples multiplied, with few natural 
 checks, filling the land with an indolent and feeble 
 population. Since the fertility of the richer parts of 
 the earth was such as to enable those who lived on them 
 to recover easily after they had been spoiled, they did 
 not develop the qualities necessary to resistance, and 
 successive raiders repeatedly found them defenceless. 
 In fact, there came of necessity a divergence into what 
 may be called predatory and vegetative races. 
 
 Now without an external stimulus calling for adap- 
 tive response, man no more changes his habits than less 
 versatile animals alter their bodily forms. Some sec- 
 tions of the human species, notably those in the tropical 
 forests, live now as they did fifty thousand years 
 ago. But in less hospitable parts of the world, where 
 conditions are more variable and the exuberance of 
 vegetation less overwhelming, stimuli which precipitate 
 a change recur at comparatively short intervals. An 
 insufficiency of food, an excess of men or a shortage of 
 women, will send men out of the desert or down from 
 the mountains and start those inquiries which lead to 
 their hearing that there is " corn in Egypt." The 
 stimulus, when it comes, produces change, not in the 
 body directly by selection, but, first in the mode of life, 
 by calls upon man's mental versatility. When condi- 
 tions throw together men of different races coming from
 
 CIVILIZATION 87 
 
 dissimilar environments, human ingenuity has abundant 
 materials to work on at the meeting-place. Here lies 
 the germ of a new order of existence. First, no doubt, 
 came the discovery that it is more profitable for the 
 victors in the inevitable conflict to make their individual 
 captives work than to kill them. Again, it must sooner 
 or later have become obvious to raiders that it was 
 a mistake to kill too many of the producers of wealth 
 in the lands they found worth plundering. As an 
 extension of these discoveries, it was learnt that it pays 
 better when conquering a new home to allow the in- 
 habitants of the country to remain as " hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water " than to exterminate them or 
 drive them out. Before these lessons had been mastered, 
 victory only meant so much plunder to carry away ; 
 for raiders must often have found a strange land not 
 worth occupying when the inhabitants who knew how 
 to work it and were used to the climate were gone. 
 If, however, they were allowed to stay and develop the 
 resources of the country for their conquerors, it might 
 be well worth the raiders' while to settle permanently 
 and enjoy the fruit of their toil. Another step follows 
 almost inevitably on this. The original inhabitants 
 would probably begin by working with less energy than 
 if they were working for their own sole benefit ; and 
 their masters, sooner or later perceiving this, would 
 compel them to work a great deal harder than they had 
 ever been used to work for themselves, releasing individual 
 energy from the blighting discouragement of savage 
 communism and organizing the work on a larger scale 
 and with the greater forethought of those who know 
 that their own backs will not be bowed by the strain 
 of achievement. The outcome of this was a new state 
 of things — civilization.
 
 88 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 Professor Jastrow says : " Civilization may be de- 
 scribed as the spark that ensues when opposing ethnic 
 elements come into contact. Culture up to a certain 
 grade may develop in any centre spontaneously, but 
 a high order of civilization is always produced through 
 the combination of heterogeneous ethnic elements." 
 Joyce says : " The tendency of rude hunting tribes 
 to rapid development when they adopt settled life has 
 not yet been fully recognized. There is no finer training 
 for the human faculties than the pursuit of hunting ; 
 it hardens the body, sharpens the observation, and 
 engenders a perpetual readiness to meet sudden emerg- 
 encies. Agriculture, on the other hand, while promoting 
 the development of the useful arts to a certain pitch, 
 is apt to result in stagnation. Students of African 
 ethnography are well aware that nearly all the great 
 kingdoms which have bloomed from time to time in 
 Central Africa have had their origin in the descent of 
 a nomadic tribe upon an agricultural, the former becom- 
 ing sedentary and developing the arts which they 
 received from the latter far beyond their previous 
 limits." While Myres remarks that : " Nothing is 
 commoner in the history of migratory peoples, than to 
 find a very small leaven of energetic intruders ruling and 
 organizing large native populations, without either 
 learning their subjects' language or imposing their own 
 till considerably later, if at all." 
 
 The Cro-Magnon culture showed to what artistic 
 heights a race of hunters could attain, but showed also 
 its limitations. In many parts of the world to-day 
 one can see how far men of an agricultural race will 
 advance and at what point they will stop if force from 
 outside does not drive them onward. 
 
 The history of civilization shows what humanity
 
 CIVILIZATION 89 
 
 as a whole can achieve when the two types are combined. 
 The initiative and intelHgence of an aristocracy of 
 soldiers and hunters on assuming the direction of forces 
 which though latent would otherwise remain undeveloped 
 in an unenterprising but submissive agricultural pro- 
 letariat, produces the great civilized nation. Under 
 the levelling influence of civilization the distinctive 
 characteristics of the two types become merged. Then 
 after the aristocracy, losing its virility, can no longer 
 govern, and the masses, losing their submissiveness, 
 can no longer be organized, civilization is no longer 
 possible and a homogeneous herd of disorderly animals 
 relapses towards simpler ways of living. 
 
 Two events in the long history of mankind outweigh 
 in importance all others. One of the decisive steps in 
 human development was made when the control and 
 direction of the many were concentrated in the hands 
 of the few. As soon as the leadership of the tribe was 
 placed at the discretion of a chief, discipline and order 
 ensured economy of effort and removed confusion of 
 aims. Thenceforward the whole strength of a multi- 
 tude of men could be concentrated upon a single object. 
 The other important step was the invention of slavery. 
 Man had the intelligence, energy and strength to 
 accomplish feats that his indolence prevented him from 
 attempting, especially where primitive communism 
 stifled individual initiative. But a man who is too lazy 
 to provide luxuries for himself will take the trouble 
 to create them for another if he is compelled by fear 
 of the lash and death. And a man who does not think 
 a luxury worth the effort necessary to obtain it if he has 
 to do the work himself, will consider it highly desirable if 
 he can compel another to do the work for him. These 
 two steps, which first placed the direction of effort in
 
 90 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 the hands of the few, and then suppHed the compulsion 
 to effort for the many, carried man a great way towards 
 perfecting his control over nature. Had man never 
 learned how to apply coercion, and how to respond to 
 it, his power of achievement would never have been 
 guessed. We are not concerned with the questions 
 which would be raised had we to consider whether the 
 extension of man's power has been for his good. There 
 can be little doubt, however, that the increased efficiency 
 of the species has been bought at an enormous cost of 
 individual suffering. When we contemplate this it is 
 perhaps well to remember that neither step was a sudden 
 one, neither was the invention of an individual or even 
 consciously adopted. Both were natural growths, the 
 outcome of conditions over which man had no control, 
 yet by means of which he purchased a larger existence. 
 
 Civilization is, when analysed, found to be a system 
 of slavery. It has its beginnings in struggle and con- 
 quest, which fill a land with a population of conquerors 
 and conquered — masters and slaves. Very quickly the 
 system has the population in its grip. On the one 
 hand, it teaches the masters needs they would never 
 have felt had they been unable to satisfy them except 
 by their own exertions ; and having provided them 
 with a supply of energy with which to carry out their 
 schemes, it lays upon them the burden of its constant 
 direction and control. On the other hand, it teaches 
 the slaves to work with a diligence and skill they would 
 not have developed without compulsion ; and out of 
 the achievement of their labour it teaches them also 
 new needs, among the chief of which are the necessity 
 for guidance and restraint. 
 
 The physical results which the system produces in 
 a land we shall consider later. These, in the form of
 
 CIVILIZATION 91 
 
 drainage and irrigation works, mines, roads, bridges, 
 harbours, canals, and cities, are effects produced in 
 man's environment, not in man himself. The biological 
 results have a prior claim to consideration. Civiliza- 
 tion introduced a new method of selection and deter- 
 mined survival by fresh standards of requirement, thus 
 working profound changes in the species. For a long 
 time the unit in the struggle for existence had for man 
 been the community. The struggle for existence had 
 been suppressed within the community, and the com- 
 petitors for survival when times of stress came were 
 whole communities. The community whose organiza- 
 tion was best and whose members were richest in the 
 quality we have discussed under the name of patriotism, 
 had the best prospects. Within itself, as it needed all 
 its members, exceptional powers in an individual did 
 not mean increased chances of his survival, though very 
 marked defects might mean elimination under the 
 working of the criminal law. But at the beginning of 
 civilization the individual method of selection again 
 came into play. Individuals with a greater capacity 
 for civilization had a greater chance of surviving and 
 leaving children to carry on their qualities. Individuals 
 incapable of civilization very quickly disappeared. 
 
 The history of the earlier civilizations shows an 
 enormous mortality of slaves. The civilizations being 
 based on slavery, there was a constant demand for slaves, 
 and the supply was at first kept up by continued war, 
 capture and purchase rather than by breeding. The 
 ordinary treatment which was accorded to slaves was 
 sufficient to account for a high death-rate, a low birth- 
 rate, and a poor expectation of life ; but beyond this 
 we know how in different circumstances the least 
 valuable elements in the slave population were most
 
 92 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 quickly used up in mines and galleys and public works. 
 Yet, notwithstanding the natural wastefulness of human 
 nature, exceptionally endowed individuals, who became 
 valuable to their owners, were taken care of and en- 
 couraged to marry, allowed to accumulate wealth, and 
 enabled eventually to buy freedom. Late on in historic 
 times. Columella, an authority on breeding domestic 
 animals in the first century of the Roman Empire, 
 expressly advocates encouraging marriage amongst the 
 best slaves. Specially gifted slaves were the more 
 likely to be preserved in the earliest times from the 
 lowness of the general average against which they stood 
 out in relief. The transference of a man from the 
 slave to the so-called free population meant really that 
 he had become so much a slave to the civilization he 
 had helped to build that an individual owner was no 
 longer necessary in his case. The converse could happen. 
 A free man might lack the necessary energy and in- 
 telligence to live up to the standard which his particular 
 civilization required. He was not allowed to relapse 
 towards brutish ways. There were certain needs of 
 existence and of decency which had to be met. He fell 
 first into debt and through debt returned to slavery 
 under an individual master. If he proved intractable 
 and unteachable, he might fall lower still and be worked 
 to death quickly in a State mine. 
 
 In all those regions throughout the world where 
 civilizations came into being, the same forces can be 
 seen working towards the same ends with surprisingly 
 little difference in method. The natural versatiUty of 
 man allowed them to be manifested in various ways. 
 Personal slavery was usually the finishing school. Ac- 
 cording to Jewish law, Hebrew slaves had to be 
 liberated after six or seven years of servitude, or at
 
 CIVILIZATION 93 
 
 the year of jubilee. It was to the interest of a 
 noble Roman and his great pride to surround himself 
 with freed-men who would do him credit. These 
 instances, however, show only the continued working of 
 the process in established civilizations. They were 
 customs which had grown out of the necessities of more 
 primitive conditions. The foundation of civilization 
 had to be on a wide base. In some cases sections of the 
 populace were educated in bulk, either by the imposi- 
 tion of taskmasters or by the levying of a tribute which 
 they could only produce by organized labour. In 
 others we find conquered nations broken up and dis- 
 tributed amongst the estates of their conquerors, where 
 eventually the more adaptable became merged in the 
 free population and the backward died off toiling in 
 chains. Some educating races used to transplant whole 
 nations to strange localities, as the Assyrians led away 
 peoples into captivity. Comparatively recently Nur- 
 hachu, the Manchu conqueror, used to break the spirit 
 of subject peoples by transferring a whole population 
 to a distant and unfamiliar country, the inhabitants of 
 mountainous country to the seashore, and coast tribes 
 to districts far inland. The transplanting of whole 
 populations, a process in later ages euphemistically 
 called colonization, has played a great part in the de- 
 velopment of a newly civilized proletariat throughout 
 the world, from the little Greek States to the great 
 Peruvian Empire. 
 
 A civilization is a system which grows out of the 
 interaction of conquering and conquered races, and 
 ends by holding both equally firmly in its grip. It is 
 easy enough to see how the conquered were raised in 
 intelligence, energy and culture by enslavement ; but 
 at first sight it is not so easy to see how the exercise of
 
 94 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 brute force improved the conquerors, and eventually 
 made them also slaves to a system. This was, however, 
 the inevitable consequence of applying force to other 
 men. In the first flush of unrestrained power came the 
 development of luxury, and if this was not to be the 
 cause of their speedy undoing it had to be tempered 
 by the growth of refinement. If the enjoyment of 
 power and its fruits were to be continued, virility must 
 be maintained and intelligence developed to meet 
 new needs which the improvement of the subject 
 section of the populace threw upon their masters. The 
 rulers had not only to keep in subjection their subjects, 
 who would, if they could, destroy them preparatory 
 to relapsing into savagery. No less had they to defend 
 what they had built up, from other warlike races who 
 would like to sweep them away and replace them. In 
 proportion as a conquered land was developed and a 
 subject population educated, a valuable property was 
 being created and the envy of neighbours excited. In 
 the early stages the evolution of the masses and the 
 rulers went on to a very great extent independently. 
 If the first conquerors who had laid the foundations of 
 a civilization became exhausted or proved unequal to 
 carrying on what they had begun, they could be exter- 
 minated and replaced by similar men without the educa- 
 tion of the masses being greatly interrupted by the 
 change of masters. On the contrary, it was likely to 
 be greatly stimulated after the change has been accom- 
 plished. History abounds in instances of this. In the 
 growth of a civilization the need for an adequate aris- 
 tocracy is just as great as the need for an adequate 
 labouring population, and the need is met by evolution 
 enforced with all the brutality universal in natural 
 methods.
 
 CIVILIZATION 95 
 
 In primitive aristocracies the rulers were the successors 
 of the original conquerors who first suppHed the direc- 
 tion and the vis a tergo to the subject populace. In- 
 stinct and often object lessons taught them the need of 
 fostering the qualities which had won them their posi- 
 tion, and it was doubtless this need which often made 
 them anxious to keep on extending their conquests 
 without their clearly knowing why. Thus we often 
 find that the males had to qualify by severe ordeal 
 before they could take their place among the warriors, 
 and then had to prove their worth in war before they 
 could marry. The continuance of their rule depended 
 as much upon their standard of conduct towards one 
 another and their capacity for discipline, shown in 
 the submission of the individuals to the requirements 
 of their caste, as upon their personal virility. When 
 a conquest was made by a band of adventurers from a 
 barren or overpopulated land, the leader, organizer 
 and ultimate king could choose his associates largely 
 on personal grounds ; but in subsequent generations 
 the maintenance of the original standard among the 
 aristocracy proved the great difficulty of civilization. 
 It was only with time that experience on this subject 
 accumulated. 
 
 In breeding domestic animals at the present day, 
 it is recognized that too much attention must not be 
 paid to the individual parents. The finest animals 
 are to be expected from the stocks which experience 
 has shown most often produce them. Unconsciously 
 this principle was applied in the early aristocracies. 
 Special privileges came to be accorded to the families 
 from which great men most frequently arose as genera- 
 tion succeeded generation, and precautions were taken 
 to preserve the purity of the stock. Brilliant individuals
 
 96 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 of obscure ancestry were regarded with suspicion, and 
 their families no more than placed on probation. The 
 customs in which these methods were enshrined vary 
 considerably in externals ; but all seem to show at the 
 outset a recognition of the need for maintaining the 
 efficiency of the governing caste and for keeping the 
 government in their hands. 
 
 What follows is the growth in power of a system. 
 Between the Masters and the Slaves there grew up 
 what was called the free population. Into this were 
 passed progressive individuals as they graduated from 
 probationary slavery ; but as the free population grew, 
 as the system became established, civilization itself 
 took the place of individual slave-owners on a larger 
 scale. Slavery for large sections of the people was 
 mitigated into serfdom. Then the restraints even of 
 serfdom were abolished, and everyone in the State was 
 free. But as the free population grew, that is to say, as 
 civilization itself took over the ownership of the slaves, 
 the powers of the masters were curtailed, and they 
 became less and less arbitrary rulers and more and more 
 mere directors and organizers. Finally, all men were 
 not only ' free,' but all had a voice in the management 
 of things : the triumph of civilization was complete 
 and the slavery of all equalized. 
 
 This is no mere figure of speech. A Londoner of 
 to-day is not the slave of an individual master who 
 feeds him according to his caprice, makes him wear a 
 livery, including a metal collar bearing his name and 
 address, extorts work from him with the lash, and has 
 a pecuniary interest in his well-being ; but he is every 
 bit as much a slave to the civilization that has grown 
 up in England. If he decides one day that civilization 
 weighs hard on him and that he will rebel and revert
 
 CIVILIZATION 97 
 
 to nature, he is soon made to realize his real position. 
 He may not throw away his clothes and wander out 
 into the country to sleep on the ground under the sky, 
 feeding on roots, berries, and such birds and animals 
 as he can catch. If he gives as his reason for wanting 
 to do so that he has not the wherewithal to pay 
 for clothing, food and lodging, he is told to work 
 and obtain it. If he refuses to do this, civilization 
 deals with him by means of prison or asylum : a 
 masterless man cannot be tolerated by a system of 
 slavery. He and his children are property at its 
 disposal. 
 
 There is the converse of this illustration. African 
 savages were taken to the new world and set to serve 
 their apprenticeship to civilization ; and before the 
 civilization had them firmly in its grip they were 
 emancipated. The majority reverted to their former 
 state, and an astonished and embarrassed civilization 
 discovered that no bribes of luxuries would make them 
 consider the work and restraint necessary to conform 
 to its standards worth while. The negroes are not 
 without the versatility characteristic of the human 
 species. An isolated negro brought up as a member 
 of a European population may acquit himself well and 
 prove as useful and able as most of his white fellow-slaves ; 
 but the great negro population of the tropics has,although 
 bound up in superstitions and rigid tribal conventions 
 of its own, not been brought, either by selection or the 
 creation of an environment, within the sphere of civiliza- 
 tion. As the much tried employer of labour in the 
 tropics sums it up : " Their needs are few, they prefer 
 laziness to luxury, and consequently they do not think 
 hard and regular work worth while for any money." 
 The need of money is civilization's whip. 
 7
 
 98 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 Tlie growth of a civilization is a time of severe 
 trial, of jealousies, oppression and revolt ; but all the 
 while the levelling process is going on. There is fusion 
 of races, fusion of languages and a struggle for existences 
 between customs, gods and ideals until out of the 
 chaos is evolved a nation with its inherent needs ex- 
 pressed in a religion and a common interest in its wealth 
 and security. A civilization is an organism, a system 
 or an environment built up by a section of mankind, 
 but moulding the people who build it. Exactly how 
 much of a man's character he owes to his physiological 
 heredity and how much to the civilization into which he 
 is born — the old question of nature or nurture — cannot 
 be separated in the study of inheritance. It is as much 
 a question of terms as whether the mollusc shapes the 
 shell which it secretes around its soft body or the shell 
 determines the form in which the animal must grow. 
 The future of the mollusc was no doubt determined 
 when it first began to make use of the salts in the water 
 around it to build a shell ; but the further development 
 of the shell and the fish cannot be separated. They 
 constitute the evolution of the shell-fish. It is, however, 
 safer to recognize civilization as itself a biological pheno- 
 menon, considering it on its own merits, and to avoid 
 trying to express it in terms of biological analogy. 
 Man, as I have said, cannot exist alone, he must form 
 communities. Where a civilization grows up it is the 
 product of a peculiar population and a peculiar environ- 
 ment. The result is a complex of religion, law, science, 
 art, language, hterature, land modified by architecture 
 and engineering, and a people born and educated in 
 such an environment and inheriting the aptitudes of 
 their various ancestors who went to modify this same 
 environment. A civilization of natural growth in the
 
 CIVILIZATION 99 
 
 course of healthy development can assimilate and even 
 may attract new elements from without as well as 
 eliminate morbid products of its own growth, but the 
 cohesion of the whole is so strong that it is usually 
 assumed to be based upon a blood affinity. The people 
 regard themselves as kindred and distinct from the rest 
 of the world. We have broad divisions into Jews and 
 Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians and so on. In less 
 exclusive times we hear of Latin and Teutonic races, or 
 even of English, German and Russian races. Although 
 these * races ' are mixed populations in which the anthro- 
 pologist can recognize neither common descent nor 
 sufficient structural uniformity to afford a basis for fine 
 distinctions, the nation-complex in its broadest sense is 
 nevertheless a very definite entity. The patriotism 
 of the savage tribe now fits the civilized nation, and it 
 fights as a unit against similar units. The struggle for 
 existence is suppressed within, and, owing to the com- 
 pleteness of the control over nature and the ever-growing 
 extent to which feeble individuals can be utilized and 
 preserved, the population increases at an enormous 
 rate. Periodically the territory becomes over-populated 
 and the law of diminishing returns is felt. Either the 
 struggle for existence must be allowed to return, or the 
 nation must find some more land for its surplus popula- 
 tion. This probably brings a conflict of interests with 
 another nation equally civilized and in more or less the 
 same state of congestion. While both were under- 
 populated it suited them better to exchange the surplus 
 products of their different lands — in a word, to trade ; 
 but now they can spare nothing with which to buy, 
 and yet need more. They fight, and the stronger 
 civilization triumphs, material wealth and scientific 
 efficiency, and the instinctive and self-sacrificing de-
 
 loo THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 votion of individuals to their State, that is to say, 
 patriotism, being the main factors which determine the 
 result. 
 
 A civilization reaches its height usually after it has 
 defeated a dangerous rival. The moment comes in 
 most civihzations when the whole people is ' free ' but 
 has not yet lost its discipline ; and the rulers have lost 
 their power but still retain their authority as the brains 
 and directors of the State. There is a period of great 
 energy and intellectual activity, the arts and sciences 
 flourish, wealth increases, nothing seems impossible, 
 and the nation believes that it is entering upon a great 
 destiny. There is an age of Pericles, an Augustan age, 
 an Elizabethan age, or some such period of florescence 
 in the history of most civilizations. It is invariably 
 followed by a reaction of disappointment ; the realiza- 
 tion that the glorious slavery is slavery still, and the 
 whole population grows restive under the yoke. It is 
 after the long, peaceful and glorious reign of a Solomon, 
 when the aspirations of a nation have been realized, 
 that the people complain of ' grievous service ' and 
 demand that their ' heavy yoke ' be made lighter. Whilst 
 under strong rulers like Saul and David they are still 
 fighting their way from servitude to empire, their 
 heart does not fail them. A rebellion against all forms 
 of authority begins which ends in the destruction of 
 the civilization, and the escape of the slaves towards an 
 animal existence, pending the arrival of fresh masters 
 to begin the cycle anew. Some individuals are very 
 comfortable under civilization and dread any relaxa- 
 tion of its power, but this is not necessarily true of all. 
 Civilization is not an ordinance for the good of man- 
 kind, but a condition of existence which may or may 
 not be satisfactory, I am not here concerned to discuss
 
 CIVILIZATION loi 
 
 which. It comes into being and grows in efficiency- 
 only when the bulk of the people are controlled from 
 without. As soon as the external guidance is removed 
 and the control has to be supplied from within it 
 must collapse. It will be easier to discuss why this 
 should be so, and how it happens, after the growing 
 stage of civilization has been examined in greater 
 detail. 
 
 A certain philosopher once contended that the 
 earth on which he stood must be the centre of the 
 universe, because whichever way he looked the furthest 
 stars were equidistant. His friends, on the other hand, 
 contended that what his observations really established 
 was not the central position of the earth, but the limited 
 range of his telescope. In attempting to trace back 
 civilization to its origin, it is advisable to watch very 
 carefully against falling into a similar error. The error, 
 however, is not likely to be repeated on a large scale. 
 In most of those regions of the world where civilizations 
 are believed to have originated, successive civilizations 
 have been traced back till the neolithic period has been 
 reached. Dr. Schliemann, starting to dig at Hissarlik, 
 found nine successive cities, one beneath the other — that 
 is to say, each built on the ruins of its predecessor 
 except the deepest, which was upon bed rock. The 
 term * cities ' may be misleading. What was re- 
 constructed was not the periodic rebuilding of the 
 same city by the same people after its accidental 
 destruction, but successive settlements which grew 
 up, decayed and perished : in fact successive civiliza- 
 tions. 
 
 The most recent was Roman, the two next were 
 Hellenic. The city below these was — at least there 
 seems little doubt about it now — Homer's Troy, and
 
 I02 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 belonged to the Mycenean ^ period. Three more 
 ' cities ' of stone and brick are distinguishable, and 
 then comes the second or burnt city, belonging to the 
 early Minoan civilization. Beneath on the rock came 
 a primitive city of stone and mud. 
 
 Beneath the Mycenean and Minoan civilization in 
 Greece and Asia Minor we reach the neolithic period. 
 In Crete we find the Minoan civilization growing for 
 more than five hundred years before the time of the 
 burnt city, which was about 2500 B.C. Beneath the 
 palace at Knossos in Crete we come down ultimately 
 to neolithic remains, dated at about 3000 B.C. When 
 the early civilization of Crete was growing it was in 
 communication with Egypt, where the great civilization 
 to which the pyramids belong was flourishing. At least 
 two civilizations grew up and decayed in Egypt before 
 this one, and before these there was a culture which also 
 grew and decayed, though whether it was a civilization 
 comparable with the later ones we cannot say ; but 
 beneath it we reach at last neolithic savagery, dating 
 about 8000 or 10,000 B.C. 
 
 Though civilizations have succeeded one another, 
 
 ^ Scientific nomenclature is rather unfortunate. Geological formations 
 which should be stated in terms of time or at least sequence are named from 
 localities, and we hear of Cambrian or Devonian strata occurring in all parts of 
 the world. Widespread races of men are likewise named after places, and we 
 speak of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men ; or after persons, and we talk of the 
 Grimaldi race. And it is no better when we come to civilizations in the 
 countries around the iEgean Sea. We speak of the Mycenean civilization, from 
 one of the places where archaeologists unearthed the remains of a particular 
 age ; or the Homeric age, which might mean the time of which the Homeric 
 poems tell, or the age when they were written in their present form. And 
 then we speak of the Minoan age, honouring Minos a mythical king ; or the 
 Cretan age, referring to the island where he lived, but whose coasts did not mark 
 the limits of his power. Having decided to call a civilization Minoan, after 
 king Minos, we divide a period of over a thousand years into Early, Middle 
 and Late, and subdivide each into three periods. To what inferno does Minos 
 commit an archasologist who crosses the Styx after talking about the third 
 middle Minoan period?
 
 CIVILIZATION 
 
 103 
 
 civilization has spread during the ages until now it 
 covers the greater part of the habitable world. Traced 
 back, civilizations are found to have originated inde- 
 pendently in isolated localities, and from these centres 
 spread in circles which eventually intersected. The 
 chief of these centres are the following, marked not as 
 areas but by dots on the accompanying map. They 
 are situated in Peru, in Central America, in China, in 
 Northern India, on the Persian plateau, in Mesopotamia, 
 in Asia Minor and in Egypt. They have these features 
 
 K^ 
 
 mv 
 
 PRIMARY FOCI OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 in common : they are fertile spots where living is 
 easy, wealth readily produced, and a vegetative popula- 
 tion liable to multiply fast, improving the comfortable 
 arts of peace, and neglecting the bracing exercise of 
 war. They are likewise spots, either backed or flanked 
 by mountainous, desert, or prairie regions of great 
 extent, where nomadic and pastoral peoples are reared 
 in a harder school, and nursed by nature with a generosity 
 so intermittent that they periodically become predatory. 
 Time after time the periodic variations in the earth's 
 climate have increased the stress of life throughout the
 
 I04 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 world, and launched the predatory peoples almost 
 simultaneously upon the vegetative. The characteristic 
 versatility of the human species has led to general 
 adaptations to new conditions, and produced periodic 
 civilizations which have decayed as their own machinery 
 for bearing the strain was improved, and the severity 
 of conditions themselves throughout the world relaxed 
 again. 
 
 The origins of a civilization always take much the 
 same form, whether the fertile district conquered is 
 overrun like Peru by invaders coming from the colder 
 south, or like Central America by a descent of tribes 
 from the more strenuous north; whether Mongolian 
 tribes from the steppes come down upon China, or 
 Aryans swarm on to the Persian plateau and break 
 into India ; whether the Euphrates Valley is settled 
 by mountaineers from the surrounding highlands or 
 nomads from the Arabian deserts ; or whether immi- 
 grants pour into Egypt from the north-east or from the 
 south-east. A seat of government is established from 
 v/hich deputies are sent to the surrounding provinces, 
 and the whole district is connected up by means of roads 
 or its natural waterways with the centre of administra- 
 tion. The object of the invaders is to control labour 
 and produce wealth ; consequently a medium for 
 sending precise orders, receiving definite reports, and 
 keeping accurate accounts is an absolute necessity ; and 
 writing or some equivalent is speedily adopted or 
 invented. The exact method evolved differs with time 
 and place and people, from denting clay, scratching 
 wax, writing or drawing on paper and parchment, 
 to knotting cords. Sometimes the memory is prompted 
 to ideas, sometimes to sounds ; but in different hands 
 very different methods prove effective. Judging by
 
 CIVILIZATION 105 
 
 the minute accounts kept and the long histories, poems 
 and dramas handed down by the Peruvians, a collection 
 of knotted cords answered their purpose as well as clay- 
 tablets served the Assyrians. In addition, the Incas 
 used relief-maps, modelled to scale in clay, of the 
 provinces they administered. When the chaos into 
 which the Tartar Empire had degenerated was ended 
 by the military genius of Hong Wou who drove the 
 Tartars out, brought a distracted land together again 
 under one rule, and, becoming the first monarch of the 
 Ming dynasty, opened a fresh period of civilization in 
 China, he is credited with giving every encouragement 
 to literature, instituting public libraries and free educa- 
 tion. It is significant that, like William the Conqueror, 
 he had a survey made upon which to base taxation. 
 But his successor, Yong Lo, went one better and found 
 time, in spite of pressing military and administrative 
 preoccupations, to organize the compilation, by scholars 
 of his realm, of an encyclopaedia consisting of eleven 
 thousand volumes and containing over three hundred 
 million words. This is rather an extreme case, but it 
 is noteworthy how often the great soldiers who found 
 a civilization are famous as patrons of literature. With 
 the recording and systematizing of ideas comes the 
 growth in knowledge whose practical applications so 
 increase the control of the animal over its environ- 
 ment. 
 
 The beginnings of civilization are so remote in time, 
 and arose in a world which has altered so much since, 
 that it is useless to attempt very accurate definition. 
 What I have aimed at in marking the map with dots 
 is to indicate some of those places where several times 
 successive invaders have built up a civilization from its 
 foundations, finding on their arrival only the debris of
 
 io6 THE ORIGINS OF 
 
 a former civilization the greater part of which they have 
 swept out of their way. There is a striking difference 
 to be noted when the history of a country Hke Spain 
 is compared with that of such districts as Egypt or 
 Central America. In Spain we find successive civiliza- 
 tions raised by the Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, 
 Saracens, and Franks. But these peoples came treading 
 on each other's heels. Each introduced a civilization 
 which had advanced to a certain phase in another land, 
 and each, turning out its immediate predecessor, carried 
 on its own development. This is very different, in 
 degree if not in kind, from the way in which at the 
 places marked on the map, civilizations were evolved 
 time after time which owed their growth, decay and 
 peculiar characteristics to local conditions, rather than 
 to the incoming people who built them up. It is v/orth 
 noting that where conditions were alike the same result 
 followed whether the actors belonged to the American, 
 the yellow, or the white race. With the negroes of the 
 typical region of Africa, civilization did not arise because 
 the exciting causes were lacking. They had not the 
 same temptation to move out of tropical luxuriance 
 upon the milder south, though in the growth of the 
 highly disciplined Zulu empire there were signs that 
 this might some day have happened. They had not 
 cold inclement steppes south of them like those which 
 produced hordes of fierce nomads above the warm 
 regions, in the northern hemisphere ; and though the 
 uplands of Central Africa were not forgotten, the main 
 attraction for the Semites of the Arabian desert lay 
 northwards. Consequently the negroes lacked the 
 necessary impulse to civihzation until the recent over- 
 crowding of Europe made their uninviting if prolific 
 forests and swamps worth an educating conqueror's
 
 CIVILIZATION 107 
 
 notice. The capacity of the African race for reacting 
 in the same way as other races therefore remains at the 
 present time an open question. Yet although we can 
 recognize in different parts of the world the predisposing 
 conditions and in such places find remains, both ancient 
 and primitive, above the neolithic strata, only a hazy 
 idea is possible as to where civilizations first began and 
 whence in spite of periodic growth and dissolution they 
 were spread by convection to other parts of the world. 
 The outstanding point is that civilization is a phase in 
 human evolution which began independently, owing to 
 analogous conditions, from numerous centres. The 
 respective civilizations of Central America, the Peru- 
 vian district, China and the Western group certainly 
 had an independent origin, if a strangely similar 
 development. 
 
 If precision is beyond attainment in regard to place, 
 still less is it possible in regard to time. Apparently 
 the influence of predatory invaders was being felt pre- 
 paring the ground for the foundations of civilization 
 in China, Northern India, and the valleys of the Nile and 
 Euphrates at about the same time. Tracing the civiliza- 
 tion in each of these regions backwards, we find indications 
 of a start somewhere about 5000 b.c. ; but besides allow- 
 ing a margin of a thousand years for probable error, we 
 think uneasily of the philosopher with the telescope. 
 There must have been much made and destroyed before 
 civilization was so firmly established that its records 
 mark a decided change in life from neolithic savagery, 
 and the length of the transition period is hard to estimate. 
 In the New World we cannot trace either the Mayan 
 or Peruvian civilizations back to their origins. A great 
 empire which produced buildings of cyclopean masonry 
 goes back in South America some thousand years before
 
 io8 THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 the Christian era, but the production of its domesti- 
 cated animals and plants requires a longer period of 
 disciplined human effort than that. This empire fell 
 and, after an interval of chaos, the Inca empire grew 
 up on its ruins, extending eventually beyond the area 
 it had covered. In the course of its expansion the Inca 
 empire conquered and absorbed other civilizations. 
 One of these, the kingdom of the Chimu, was in its 
 decadence when the Incas conquered it, and had reached 
 and passed a higher level of art than the Incas themselves 
 ever attained. Its civilization seems necessarily to go 
 back to a very remote antiquity. 
 
 From the strain of trying to pierce the obscurity 
 which veils the beginnings of civilization, it is a relief to 
 turn to the task, difficult in itself but easy in comparison, 
 of tracing the spread of civilization in historic times, and 
 following the methods of its rise and fall where they 
 are in full sight.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 Spread of civilization is brought about in a variety of ways. 
 Life under civilization. 
 
 Comparisons between civilizations must be made at corresponding 
 stages in their respective cycles. 
 
 The needs of civilization are uniform. 
 
 Ancient Babylonian and Cretan civilizations, for example, met their 
 difficulties much as does modern civilization in Europe. 
 
 Civilizations succeeded one another, but in no regular sequence of 
 progressive improvement. 
 
 The most successful civilizations have shown tolerance and 
 adaptability. 
 
 The crowning glories of different civilizations are very similar. 
 Civilization is intermittent : 
 
 (fl) Civilizations succeed one another, forming long periods of 
 
 civilization. 
 (^) These periods of civilization are separated by intervals of 
 chaos. 
 Migrations from the breeding grounds in Arabia and Northern Asia 
 have rejuvenated civilization periodically. 
 
 The reasons why civilizations decay are that — 
 
 (a) in the security they achieve their populations undergo 
 
 physical deterioration. 
 (^) When their machinery begins to exhaust its original impetus 
 it cannot produce motive power and direction from within. 
 
 THE early growth of civilization is recon- 
 structed with much doubt and difficulty 
 from disconnected fragments of information. 
 Evidences are obtained from language, religious usages,
 
 no THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 legend and folk-lore, archaeological relics, documents 
 such as letters, wills, leases, inventories of plunder and 
 tribute, and written histories. The interpretation of 
 these is an art in itself, but my object here is not to 
 give a summary of history, but to study a phase of animal 
 existence. 
 
 It was the interaction of man and his environment 
 which gave rise to civilization at the various centres 
 from which civilization spread ; but we are on much 
 surer ground in discussing the spread of civilization 
 than in searching after its origins, though often in the 
 spread we can watch processes closely resembling these 
 origins. As a civilization grows it gets into touch with 
 other distant civilizations, and the influence of new forces 
 is felt on the peoples living between, especially those 
 upon the trade routes along which communications 
 pass. We see this happening right across Asia. Then 
 there is a process of infection. Quiet peoples living on 
 the fringe of a civilization are dazzled by its splendour, 
 enter into trading relations and are entangled and 
 brought, by new wants and increase of population, 
 under the yoke of a system of living if not of an alien 
 race, without knowing to what they are giving up their 
 freedom. Fierce tribes try to prey on the neighbouring 
 land whose wealth is increased by the toil and contrivance 
 of others, and a civilization has to expand to bring them 
 into the system of its servitude that they may contribute 
 their share. As wealth increases within the artificial 
 paradise, the frontiers have to be extended to carry 
 the forces of nature, with which the struggle for exist- 
 ence must be fought, ever further from the centre 
 whence it is organized and where its spoils are enjoyed. 
 The versatility of man ensures the working of an infinity 
 of methods of which a few instances must suffice.
 
 OF CIVILIZATION in 
 
 Civilization spread northwards from India into 
 Tibet and eastwards into Burmah. As the Chinese 
 civilization grew in strength and extent it was felt more 
 strongly than the Indian influence, and in the end 
 supplanted it in Tibet. It also overflowed into Korea 
 and Indo-China and encroached upon Burmah. Yet 
 China, though the great educating influence of the Far 
 East, did not force its civilization upon Japan. The 
 Japanese islanders came and sought it. The early- 
 traditions of Japan deal with wars of conquest in which 
 the Japanese, whoever they may have been, conquered 
 the aborigines, driving them from south northwards, 
 leaving them at last only the inhospitable northern 
 island. Out of mixed swarms of invaders a more or 
 less homogeneous and ordered nation was formed which, 
 visiting the mainland, conquered Korea and came there 
 in contact with Chinese civilization. The Japanese 
 did not settle on the mainland, but imported its civiliza- 
 tion, encouraging valuable foreigners, particularly 
 Chinese scribes and scholars, to come to the islands by 
 offering them grants of land and promising immunity 
 from taxation. After the Chinese had for a time put 
 a stop to Japanese interference with Korea by a crushing 
 defeat and the destruction of their ships in 670 a.d., 
 Japan became the recognized asylum for cultured 
 refugees from China and Korea. In a somewhat 
 similar manner Crete, Cyprus, and the ^Egean region 
 in the Minoan period, doubtless derived valuable 
 lessons from Egypt and the East, though the character 
 of their civilization was determined by the peculiarities 
 of the islands and of the peoples, who were possibly 
 invaders from the north. 
 
 After civilization had become established, and grown 
 sufficiently strong to hold off barbarian interference
 
 112 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 long enough for its effects to be felt through many 
 generations, the surplus population of civilized lands 
 began to migrate and form colonies, the colonists 
 taking their civihzation with them to graft upon other 
 lands where their greater control over nature enabled 
 them to subdue the inhabitants. Although slavery or 
 at least a race of conquerors and a subject population 
 are constant features in early civilizations, this is a 
 different process from the origin of civilization by the 
 interaction of predatory conquerors and the vegetative 
 inhabitants of a fertile land. It was by this method of 
 convection that civilization was spread along the 
 Mediterranean by Greek and Phoenician colonists. The 
 process is sometimes carried to extremes by peoples 
 whose belief in their own civilization impels them to 
 embark on a crusade. Darius wished to force the 
 Persian civilization upon the Greeks. Alexander tried 
 to thrust Greek civilization down the Asiatic throat 
 with his spear-butt. The Mohammedan Arabs in the 
 old world and the Spaniards in America both employed 
 fire and sword to inflict their ' culture ' upon races who 
 were not strong enough to protect their own ; and the 
 same spirit seems to have inspired the recent German 
 enterprise. Occasionally we see the rival claims of 
 two distinct and incompatible ' cultures ' decided by 
 the sword, as in the days when Rome and Carthage 
 fought for the Mediterranean. 
 
 In the growth of Rome from being a barbaric 
 village of the Etruscan frontier to being the centre 
 of administration of a homogeneous Italy, we have a 
 very fair specimen of the evolution of a civilization by 
 the mutual education of conquerors and conquered. 
 We can actually watch how a system was built up 
 which held both alike in an impartial grip. But the
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 113 
 
 Roman civilization learnt much from the older civiliza- 
 tions with which it came in contact in the course of its 
 growth. 
 
 When the northern races, hustled by the stir of 
 forces in Northern Asia, poured down upon the Roman 
 Empire, they found the Mediterranean civilization in 
 its decadence, and reduced it to chaos. The population 
 of Europe, which had grown rank under relaxed control 
 in pampered security, had to be pruned and weeded 
 as well as revivified with new blood ; but it was the 
 stern discipline of the feudal period which laid the 
 foundation of a new civilization. It is of peculiar 
 interest for us to trace the process in English history. 
 A country which, after the swift decay of its Roman 
 civilization, when the legions were withdrawn, had 
 received a succession of alien invaders and fallen into 
 a state of confusion and disorder received, in the 
 Normans, rulers who were a great contrast to its brutal, 
 gross-feeding, heavy-drinking inhabitants. The Norman 
 chivalry, with its temperate habits and the culture 
 it brought with it, introduced valuable elements into 
 English life ; but it was the centralization of control, 
 the wide gulf which separated the rulers from the 
 ruled, and the iron firmness with which in consequence 
 the education of the masses was conducted, which gave 
 England her new start in civilization. 
 
 It has been almost the opposite in China, where time 
 after time the fierce Huns, Tartars and Manchus, 
 breaking in upon a civilization in its periods of deca- 
 dence, have adopted its methods and supplied not a new 
 culture, but the order in which the old could revive. 
 
 A curious case is that of the Nahua tribes, whose 
 conquests did not overwhelm the Maya civilization, 
 but pressed upon its flank, and from the models it supphed
 
 114 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 built up the new Toltec civilization. With the arrival 
 of further swarms of the Nahua peoples arose the Aztec 
 empire, inferior though more vigorous than its decadent 
 neighbour. Had the growth of the young Aztec empire 
 been watched instead of suddenly arrested, it would 
 have been interesting to have followed its further 
 evolution. One is tempted to profitless speculation 
 on what might have been the state of affairs to-day- 
 had the sudden attack of the Spaniards failed, and the 
 civilizations of the new world, like those of China and 
 Japan, succeeded in excluding Europeans long enough 
 to adopt their weapons and learn from their enemies 
 how to compete with them. 
 
 From this brief sketch of the origins and spread of 
 civilizations it is necessary to turn to a consideration of 
 life under civilization. Now civilizations, as I have 
 said already, grow, mature and decay. After a civiliza- 
 tion has fallen into decadence there comes a time when 
 most of what it has achieved is destroyed. Its libraries 
 are used as fuel, its mighty buildings, first falling out of 
 repair, become ruins, and finally mere quarries from which 
 a degenerate race plunder materials for constructing 
 mean huts ; its art is forgotten, its language corrupted ; 
 its roads overgrown, and its traditions lost. In course 
 of time another civilization may rise upon the same 
 site, utilizing perhaps what relics of its predecessor it can 
 find. This process has been going on in various localities 
 at intervals of a few hundred years for a period of some 
 ten or twelve thousand years. Nothing shows more 
 clearly that civilization is a phase in the history of the 
 human species than the fact that the machinery and 
 products of the latest civilizations are practically the 
 same as those of the earliest. Different civilizations are 
 much alike at the same stage of their growth or decay.
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 115 
 
 though separated by thousands of years in time and 
 thousands of miles in space. Successive civilizations, 
 even on the same ground, do not show progressive im- 
 provement on their predecessors ; on the contrary, a 
 later civilization often falls short of the standard reached 
 in each stage by an earlier one. One can only infer that 
 man in a certain phase of his occupancy of the earth has 
 very definite needs, a very small range of method in 
 supplying them, and very uniform and limited powers 
 for carrying out these schemes. 
 
 It is not surprising that we should see in the dis- 
 integration of society at the present stage of the European 
 civilization, and its branches in those regions to which 
 they have been transplanted, a close parallel to a stage 
 in the decadence of the Mediterranean civilization 
 under the Roman Empire, and, at an earlier stage, in 
 the decay of Greece. The modern order of things is 
 mainly built of the same materials as the Roman Empire. 
 It is not surprising that the same people, taking the 
 debris of a former age, namely, the Roman law, the 
 Christian religion, and the Greek culture, should have 
 again produced a very similar structure. The main 
 addition has been the fruits of Arabian science which 
 developed in Spain, when, during the submergence 
 of civilization in Europe, a Semitic civilization extended 
 from the Atlantic along the north of Africa to India. 
 If we want to institute comparisons with a view to ascer- 
 taining whether there has been progress in human 
 affairs, we must compare different civilizations at the 
 same stage ; not ourselves with what we were five 
 hundred years ago or with what Rome was in early days 
 of the republic, or in the last death-throes of the Empire. 
 The Athens of Pericles was nearer to us than this. 
 " Indeed, as Arnold remarked, the portion of history
 
 ii6 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 dealt with by Thucydides is only ancient in the sense 
 that the events related happened a long while ago ; in 
 all other respects it is more modern than the history of 
 our own countrymen in the Middle Ages " (Richard 
 Crawley). Perhaps, however, to judge of human life 
 under civiHzation, it is better to compare civilizations 
 that are widely remote and only indirectly connected. 
 
 Seeing that civilization depends upon the develop- 
 ment of agriculture ordered on a large scale, it is hardly 
 surprising that it shows great uniformity. I have 
 already referred to the dependence of civilization upon 
 writing or some equivalent. No less pressing is the 
 need for accurate measurement of time and definition 
 of the seasons. In Egypt, Babylon, China, Central 
 America, Peru, we find from the earliest times that 
 astronomy was studied with a view to making a calendar 
 and fixing dates. When the Spaniards reached Mexico 
 they found that the Aztecs had a calendar more accurate 
 than their own. Seeing how civilization depends upon 
 forced labour, begun by conquest and enslavement and 
 carried on by the needs it automatically creates, it is 
 inevitable that the growth and regulation of society 
 should follow everywhere very similar lines, that wealth 
 should accumulate and industries arise, that capital 
 should need yet control labour, and that labour should 
 be jealous of capital and by attacking it bring ruin on 
 itself, and cause the downfall of civilization. Men and 
 horses being what they are, can we wonder that weapons 
 and the main principles of organized warfare in corre- 
 sponding stages of elaboration should be strikingly 
 alike ? The handling of infantry and cavalry, and the 
 use of projectiles, little affected by the differences in 
 their effective range, the guarding of communications 
 and scouting, have left commanders of widely separated
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 117 
 
 ages and lands little scope for varied treatment. A 
 general pressing an attack is seen in every age trying to 
 decide whether he will attempt to break the enemy's 
 centre or to turn his flank. Military commanders were 
 faced by the problem of defending long frontiers thou- 
 sands of years before the modern European armies 
 confronted one another in entrenchments extending 
 across the continent. The Romans defended Britain 
 against attacks from the north by earthworks stretching 
 right across the island, and longer ago than 200 b.c. 
 the northern frontier of China was defended against 
 barbarian invasion for sixteen hundred miles by the 
 famous ' Great Wall.' In all ages it seems to have 
 been easier to find good soldiers than good oflBcers, and 
 good ofliicers for the lower commands than for the higher 
 ones. The Chinese general Hansin declared that the 
 more soldiers at his disposal the better results he could 
 obtain ; but when the Emperor Kaotsou, anxious to con- 
 duct a campaign in person, asked his advice, the outspoken 
 soldier warned him that, though he could command an 
 army which did not exceed one hundred thousand men, 
 he was not competent to handle a larger number. The 
 monarch, by disregarding this warning, proved that the 
 estimate of his ability was a correct one. In the entirely 
 isolated civilization of South America we find the Incas, 
 when they waged war in the tropical forests, systemati- 
 cally relieving their troops in the unhealthy area, at 
 short intervals, with a rotation of drafts, so that they 
 might be brought back to recuperate in the uplands. 
 
 If we examine the ordering of society in Babylon 
 four thousand years ago, we find the same problems which 
 face ourselves being met in the same way. To judge by 
 leases which have come down to us, land tenure was much 
 as it is now, and conveyancing in the hands of Babylonian
 
 ii8 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 lawyers was managed much as by our own. In a great 
 community, both agricultural and manufacturing, the 
 points to be settled by litigation were endless, and had 
 to be considered by skilled judges in the light of pre- 
 cedent. In the security of so great an industrial centre 
 much petty trading was in the hands of women, and 
 women held property independently of their husbands ; 
 and if unmarried, they could, in the shelter of a trade 
 union under religious management, carry on business 
 independent of anyone. For the workings of so com- 
 plicated a society it was necessary to make education 
 universal, and all children were taught to read and 
 write. Public services, such as the post office, were 
 efficiently run. The public safety was guarded by laws 
 regulating medical practice and the building of dwell- 
 ings. Even the persons and property of the slaves were 
 humanely protected by law. In view of the complicated 
 social system the law recognized different degrees of 
 responsibility for crime or default in different classes. 
 and different rights to compensation according to the 
 status of the injured party. The civilization of Babylon 
 about 2000 B.C. was different in detail from that of Lon- 
 don nearly 2000 a.d., just as its material magnificence and 
 stupendous engineering works were different ; but it 
 was not a bit less highly organized, although it perished 
 utterly, and is separated from our own day by other 
 civilizations and intervening periods of barbarism. 
 
 In Crete, at a period no less remote, the physical 
 externals of a civilization long since extinguished, with 
 equal completeness, were far more like ours of to-day 
 than those of the civilization which immediately followed 
 it. The people build elaborate houses, orientating 
 them with a view to utilization of the sunny aspect. 
 The dwellings were sometimes four storeys high, and
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 119 
 
 placed on the side of a hill so that both the top 
 storey and the bottom had a door opening upon a 
 street. The staircases, decoration, bathrooms, upstairs 
 and downstairs water-closets with apparatus for flushing 
 and traps for examining the drains, testify to a knowledge 
 of sanitary science that was soon after lost and only 
 fully recovered by another civilization nearly forty 
 centuries later. The Hellenic and Roman civilizations, 
 which in due course grew up after the Minoan civiliza- 
 tion had perished, never equalled it in these respects. 
 Only within the last century has the European civiliza- 
 tion been able to compare with it in effective sanitation. 
 Furthermore, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes point out that : " In 
 contrast with mediaeval Candia, and with prehistoric 
 Troy, Tiryns, Mycenae and Athens, the ancient capital 
 of Crete had no wall of fortification. In this respect as 
 in many others, Knossos was modern in spirit. Trusting 
 throughout a long period of its history to the immunity 
 of isolation, and later to an actual supremacy at sea, 
 the Minoan capital, like London and Washington, pre- 
 ferred to run the risk of capture than to cramp its life 
 within walls. And, like London and Washington, it 
 was fired by enemies and rebuilt with greater splendour 
 and with no serious interruption of its prosperity ; until 
 at last its own vitality was spent, and there could be 
 no recovery from an attack in which the enemy within 
 the gates combined with the old foe from the north 
 to wreck the Minoan State." In dress the Cretans, 
 their women at any rate, were strikingly like modern 
 Europeans. Their long, many-flounced skirts, their 
 high-collared, embroidered, puff-sleeved bodices, laced-in 
 waists, gloves, and broad brimmed, fancifully trimmed 
 hats, were all ' modern.' The flowing robes of the 
 Greeks when the Hellenic civilization grew up after the
 
 I20 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 Minoan had fallen, appear to us ' antique ' in contrast. 
 But these few points are enough to illustrate how, while 
 civihzations succeeded each other, each had its own way 
 of solving its problems, in fact was self-contained. The 
 succession does not form a regular series of progressive 
 development, and the struggle of human ingenuity in 
 coping with its needs, shows a fluctuating, not ascending, 
 curve of competence. As Professor Murray says : " We 
 seem in ancient Greece to be moving in a region that is 
 next door to savagery, and in the midst of it to have 
 speech with men whom we might gladly accept as our 
 leaders or advisors if they lived now." No civilization 
 ever begins where its predecessor left off. It may find 
 much that is of use to it in the debris of a predecessor 
 at an early stage in its own growth, and be enabled by 
 this advantage eventually to reach a higher level ; but 
 this does not necessarily happen. 
 
 In extending their spheres of influence we find that 
 the successful civilizations are those which try least to 
 change the way of life of the peoples they gather into 
 their fold, and those which show toleration for existing 
 religions and institutions wherever they do not conflict 
 with the general scheme. Cyrus handled all religions very 
 tenderly. So did Kublai Khan. The Roman Empire 
 was careful to disturb as little as possible the way of 
 life of the countries it absorbed. The Peruvian empire 
 seems to have been guided by the same principle, and to 
 have allowed the primitive communism of village life 
 to form the basis of the socialistic system its inspectors 
 controlled under the rule of the Inca aristocracy. Even 
 the Mohammedan conquerors were usually benign. 
 In India, Akbar was broad-minded to a degree, and in 
 Spain the Moors were easier masters and showed greater 
 forbearance when deaHng with other creeds than either
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 121 
 
 the Christian Visigoths who came before them or the 
 Christian Franks who came after. As a civilization 
 matures, its usages crystalHze into a legal code, which is 
 perfected by experiment until it expresses the needs 
 of the community. Often a time comes when the code 
 is straightened out and defined. The result is attributed 
 later to the original genius of one man, a Lycurgus, 
 a Hammurabi, or a Nezahualcoyotl. But these men 
 are really enlightened compilers. Changes in law are 
 failures unless they are made in recognition of newly 
 recognized needs : as a means of compulsion to new 
 habits they are ineffective. The whole American 
 hemisphere testifies to this by showing the powerlessness 
 of ready-made legal systems, however carefully drafted, 
 to direct life in new communities whose needs have not 
 yet emerged from their perplexities. 
 
 When a civilization has reached its height the form 
 its crowning glories take shows little variety. There 
 is the magnificent luxurious capital, and the beneficent 
 ruler, who nearly always delights in gardens, menageries 
 and libraries, and patronizes all forms of learning. The 
 arts are encouraged, and developed by schools and 
 academies whose aim is to attract all the talent in the 
 known world. In China, Soutsong founded the Hanlin 
 College about half-way through the eighth century, 
 and about a century later Abderahman was fostering 
 learning by very similar methods at Cordova. Where 
 this phenomenon of florescence is to be observed there 
 is, though difference in kind, owing to local conditions, 
 little difference in the amount of elaboration or degree 
 of effectiveness. It may be remarked in passing that 
 fraud and embezzlement by government officials 
 appears to be as old as civilization. What the Americans 
 have found it necessary to invent the new word ' graft '
 
 122 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 to describe, was rife in ancient Babylonia and Egypt, and 
 stories three thousand years old of collusion between 
 corrupt officials and inspectors, sent by reforming mon- 
 archs to check them, have a surprisingly ' modern ' ring. 
 Civilization seems to reach and stop at much the same 
 level whatever the age, the land, or the race. This is 
 most strikingly shown when we consider the great 
 civilizations of Central and South America. These 
 developed independently of one another and of old-world 
 influences. When discovered by the Spaniards they 
 were found to be cut off from the knowledge of the old 
 world by such differences as ignorance of the principles 
 of the wheel and the arch, just as the ancient world is cut 
 off from the modern by ignorance of steam and electric 
 power, and explosives. Yet in the new world the 
 institutions and achievements of civilization were much 
 the same as in the old world, not lower and very little 
 different. In Mexico the Spaniards found an empire 
 with a monarch on a familiar old-world pattern, and in 
 the Tlaxcalan State a confederacy of city States which 
 at first it appeared correct to describe as a republic. 
 The market at Tlaltelolco was finer than the most 
 travelled of them had seen in the old world. Its daily 
 attendance was estimated at over twenty thousand 
 persons. In South America the skins of animals were 
 placed in river beds to collect gold dust, just as a fleece 
 was used to recover alluvial gold from the sands of 
 Pactolus. In Peru the barren mountains when cut into 
 terraces and irrigated by stone-lined conduits which 
 tapped the very snows of the summits, supported a 
 larger population, living ingreater prosperity and security, 
 than they have done since the civilization evolved on 
 the spot was swept away by adventurers, who have put 
 a mere travesty of European civilization in its place.
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 123 
 
 In this review of civilization, so far as I have carried 
 it, I have dealt briefly with three important questions : 
 the rise of civilizations, the spread of civilization, and 
 the conditions of life under civilization. I have now 
 to consider a fourth, the intermittent character of 
 civilization. This has two aspects : the succession of 
 civilizations and the intermissions of civilization, which 
 are distinct things. For instance, from the beginning 
 of the seventh century until the present time China 
 has been successively under the Tang, Sung, Tartar, 
 Ming, and Manchu dynasties. With each of these a 
 new civilization began, which grew and then declined 
 until the country was in disorder from which the 
 succeeding dynasty rescued it. Yet in spite of these 
 ups and downs the general level of civilization in China 
 for the last thirteen centuries has been a fairly high one. 
 The periods of disorder could be shown as notches in 
 a well-raised curve which do not come down to the 
 base-line except possibly between the Tang and the 
 Sung dynasties. But the four centuries preceding were 
 times of chaos, when China was decadent, divided, and 
 distracted by Tartar inroads. 
 
 Before these four centuries there came another 
 long period, lasting through nearly fourteen centuries, 
 during which China was at a fairly high though unequal 
 level of civilization. During this time the Chow, Chin, 
 and Han dynasties each grew and decayed. Prior to 
 this was another period of decadence, when China was 
 harassed by Huns and Tartars. Merging into this we 
 find the decline of the Hsia dynasty coming at the end 
 of a golden age whose history is uncertain and chronology 
 vague. Behind this period comes another still more 
 indefinite, but susceptible to interpretation. The 
 ' black-haired race ' are invaders conquering the land
 
 124 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 where they are one day to build the Chinese empire, 
 and waging tedious wars against ' mounted warriors,' 
 ' ungovernable vermin ' and similar nuisances which 
 need extermination as well as disparagement. 
 
 In Europe as in China we find civilization cut into 
 lengths. The present civilization of Europe rose out of 
 the chaos which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. 
 The Roman Empire unified in one system the civiliza- 
 tion which had grown up around the Mediterranean, 
 starting with Hellenic culture. Before the Hellenic 
 came Minoan civilizations. It is the same in other parts 
 of the world. 
 
 It will be seen that there are at least two things 
 that must each be considered separately. Firstly, there 
 is the alternation of long periods of civilization, with 
 breaks of chaotic disorder coming between. Secondly, 
 there is the succession of civilized systems which together 
 make up the long civilized period. 
 
 The long periods last roughly about fifteen hundred 
 years. According to Professor Petrie there have been 
 eight of these periods in Europe, counting from the 
 earliest dawn of civilization in Egypt, the duration of 
 each period tending to be longer than its predecessor ; 
 and the intervals are marked by an inrush of barbarian 
 races and an interlude of destruction and admixture of 
 blood.-' Of the biological explanation of this periodic- 
 ity of civilization throughout the world it is impossible 
 to speak with any certainty in the present state of 
 our knowledge. I do not myself think that an 
 admixture of the blood of different races can be 
 held to account for everything. There are, however, 
 certain phenomena which can be described, and certain 
 
 > Professor Petrie's little book, The Re-volutions of Civilisation, Harper, is a mine 
 of information upon this subject.
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 125 
 
 facts which may be taken into consideration in inter- 
 preting them. 
 
 To north and south of the civilized belt, which 
 crossed the northern lands of the Old World, were 
 prolific areas whence its population was periodically- 
 reinforced by invasion. One might almost call them 
 stock-pots of humanity which boiled over every few 
 centuries, with occasional splutterings between. One of 
 these was situated in the Arabian deserts. For brevity 
 and completeness, Hogarth's description of Arabia as 
 " in all ages a prime source of ethnic disturbance in 
 West Asia " can hardly be improved. " The great 
 southern peninsula is for the most part a highland 
 steppe endowed with a singularly pure air and an un- 
 contaminated soil. It breeds, consequently, a healthy 
 population whose natality, compared to its death-rate, 
 is unusually high ; but since the peculiar conditions of 
 its surface and climate preclude the development of 
 its internal food-supply beyond a point long ago reached, 
 the surplus population which rapidly accumulates 
 within it is forced from time to time to seek its susten- 
 ance elsewhere. The difficulties of the roads to the 
 outer world being what they are (not to speak of the 
 certainty of opposition at the other end), the intending 
 emigrants rarely set out in small bodies, but move 
 restlessly within their own borders until they are grown 
 to a horde, which famine and hostility at home compel 
 at last to leave Arabia." Hordes of Semites have 
 poured out, overrunning the neighbouring lands on 
 four occasions within historic times. The last occasion 
 was when the Mohammedan Arabs spread till they 
 extended from the Atlantic to India and dominated the 
 Mediterranean and the Near East. The preceding 
 Semitic inundation was about thirteen centuries b.c.
 
 126 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 and is known as the Aramaean. The one before that 
 was about twelve centuries earher, and is known as the 
 Canaanite. There are evidences of yet another some 
 twelve centuries earlier still. The effects which these 
 waves of humanity produced are matters of history, 
 but their cause is a problem for the naturalist, who has 
 not yet succeeded in solving it. Fat years of exuberant 
 breeding, lean years of succeeding famine, decadence 
 in neighbouring races tempting a combined excursion 
 as an alternative to domestic competition, are probably 
 all factors ; and there was probably some exciting cause 
 which precipitated the event. " Hunger and avarice," 
 according to Dr. Becker, speaking of the last Semitic 
 outbreak, " not religion, are the impelling forces, but 
 religion supplies the essential unity and the central 
 power." 
 
 Across the northern continent from the shores of 
 the Baltic to the eastern coast of Asia is another area 
 occupied by prolific races which periodically overflow 
 south and south-west. Here, however, the area is so 
 large, the races involved so numerous and diverse, and 
 the outlet so wide, that a periodicity, supposing it does 
 exist, is less easy to trace than in the Arabian area. 
 The terrestrial effects, for instance, of some remote 
 siderial cycle need not of necessity affect all parts of 
 the earth simultaneously, and even should they cause 
 a famine, say, in north-eastern Asia at the same time 
 as in the Arabian desert, the results would have to be 
 transmitted and transmuted, and might not appear 
 in a movement of the tribes on the Danube until years, 
 possibly generations, later, when they would be difficult 
 to correlate with a previous upheaval among the Arabs. 
 
 Notwithstanding the difficulties with which one is 
 faced when one tries to be detailed and precise, there
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 127 
 
 do appear to be periodic crises in the history of man- 
 kind throughout the world which affect the course of 
 civiHzation. The last occurred during the early centuries 
 of the Christian era. Throughout the world, though 
 not simultaneously in all parts of the world, races were 
 restless and migrating. The old civilizations were in 
 decay, and there was a period of demolition and a fresh 
 start. The systems which fell then had made a some- 
 what similar ragged start in a similar period of nomadic 
 unrest several centuries before. 
 
 If we narrow our attention from the great waves of 
 civilization to the rise and fall of the little systems out 
 of which they are piled up, we find firmer ground beneath 
 our feet and can lay down some sound generalizations 
 upon the reasons why civilizations decay. The first 
 consideration is, of course, biological. In dealing with 
 the rise of civilization, I have shown that there are 
 many factors which tend to an improvement of the 
 mixed races which build up the system. After the 
 system has become firmly established there is a change, 
 and in proportion to its own perfection its people tend 
 to decay. The further a civilization gets ahead of the 
 forces of its environment, the lower its death-rate 
 falls, and the less severe is the elimination from the 
 proletariat of those deficient in mind and body. Along 
 with a progressive increase of morbid elements among 
 the stock from which each successive generation is bred 
 there goes on a reduction in the numbers of the best 
 types. The individuals most vigorous in mind and 
 body take the places where they are exposed to the 
 greatest strain and risk. Whether their activities are 
 military or industrial, whether they risk their lives on 
 the land frontiers or on the sea, in mines or amidst 
 machinery, the result is the same : they contribute
 
 128 THE GROWTH AND SPREAD 
 
 fewer to the next generation than the feebler types who 
 lead easier lives, making lower stakes for lesser personal 
 rewards. As the complexity of life under civilization 
 increases, economic reasons reduce the rate of multi- 
 plication among the more intelligent and self-controlled 
 stocks ; while the lowest types not only lack the motives 
 and abihty for exercising a similar restraint, but are 
 protected if not actively encouraged in their fecundity 
 at the expense of the community at large. Consequently 
 the more perfect does the organization of a people 
 become, the more rapidly does its physical deterioration 
 progress. 
 
 Side by side with the physical deterioration in a 
 civilization there progresses a decay in its own machinery. 
 The whole system depends upon control directed by 
 intelligence. The more perfect does a civilization 
 become, the more completely conquerors and conquered, 
 masters and servants, are fused and levelled to a uni- 
 versal slavery under the system they have built up, the 
 weaker becomes the control and the lower the intelligence 
 which directs it. At the very time when both the 
 complexity of problems and the extent of knowledge 
 make unembarrassed control by experts necessary, the 
 ultimate direction of affairs is in the hands of the de- 
 teriorated populace. The method of decay varies. 
 Great despotisms are torn by military adventurers and 
 split up into rival bands of brigands. Countries in 
 which the form of decay is democratic are rent by 
 political factions. The ultimate effect is the same. 
 There is the disruption of the great system into a 
 multiplicity of warring units out of which stable com- 
 binations can only be formed by force from outside. 
 
 The history of nations consists largely in tracing the 
 process of decay which destroyed their civilization ;
 
 OF CIVILIZATION 129 
 
 but the causes of decline have rarely been summed up 
 more pithily than in the speech attributed to the Inca 
 Rocca. Recalling to his countrymen their lost great- 
 ness, he explained the passing of the ancient empire of 
 Peru as follows : " It is vice and sloth which consumed 
 its grandeur, and reduced it almost to a vanishing 
 point. Our policy was turned into a system of each 
 man being his own master, leaving us to be satisfied 
 with the thought that once we had a government." 
 He is no less tersely to the point when he outlines the 
 policy which he believes will promote a national revival. 
 " You yourselves," he says, " instead of performing the 
 duties of men, follow the path of animals, you have 
 become so effeminate that you have forgotten what a 
 sling or an arrow may be. . . . My first decree is that 
 you apply yourselves to warlike exercises. This you 
 must do, for it was by discipline and exercises that our 
 ancestors became Lords of the World, as our Quipuca- 
 mayocs tell us. Thus occupied, idleness will be driven 
 away, you will become accustomed to obedience." 
 The results of these reforms, that " you will recover 
 what has been lost, and you will finally regain the 
 glory that has departed," was a promise richly fulfilled 
 in the glories of the Inca empire, which after centuries 
 of chaos equalled if not surpassed those of the previous 
 civilization. 
 
 Such is the cycle of civilization ; but the position of 
 the human species to-day, as a result of the recurrence 
 of this cycle through a period of some ten or twelve 
 thousand years, requires for its treatment a separate 
 chapter.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MAN AT THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 A new era opened with — 
 
 (a) the discovery of the New World, 
 (^) the perfecting of natural science. 
 The acquisition of new resources suspended the struggle for existence 
 throughout the world until — 
 
 (a) consumption of surface wealth, 
 (^) raised standards of living, 
 (c) increased population, 
 
 restored the old conditions. 
 The tendency has been to rate the importance of the new continents 
 too low, and of modern science too high. 
 
 Science works no direct biological changes in man. 
 Though man is unchanged his circumstances have altered ; for 
 methods which before were local and separate are now applied 
 uniformly and continuously throughout the world. 
 
 Political 
 
 Conditions formerly observed to indicate decay of a local civilization 
 are to-day prevalent throughout the world. 
 
 The force and intelligence necessary to direct civilization are 
 dissipated in internal strife. 
 
 The constant feature is the desire of the individual to plunder the 
 community. 
 
 Under all forms of government aJike, competition for office extends 
 and becomes unscrupulous. 
 
 Democratic selection fails to promote the survival of either able or 
 honest administration. 
 
 Decentralized power is only co-ordinated and employed intelligently 
 in moments of national danger, but the State is then found to be 
 peculiarly vulnerable. 
 
 130
 
 MAN AT THE PRESENT DAY 131 
 
 All these recognizable signs of decay are reappearing throughout the 
 present civilization. 
 
 The question whether disintegration will be accelerated or arrested 
 by the present crisis must be left open. 
 
 Religious 
 
 Religion, fundamentally necessary to national health, shows decay 
 either by — 
 
 (a) over refinement, 
 
 (b) internal dissension, 
 
 (r) degradation into magic, 
 (^) scepticism. 
 
 Social 
 
 Individuals look to the State to relieve them from the need for 
 effort by repressing individual initiative in all. 
 
 A uniform decadence seems to pervade the old world and the new. 
 
 Physical 
 
 Mankind to-day are overweighted by the civilization they have 
 built. 
 
 For many reasons the stock may have degenerated. 
 
 The world civilization of to-day has all the signs which have 
 marked decay in local civilizations of the past ; but the immediate 
 future cannot be foretold. 
 
 I SAID when first introducing the subject of 
 civiHzation that the history of this phase of 
 human existence falls naturally into two 
 divisions. It appears to us to do so to-day ; but the 
 biologist of the future may think the division arbitrary 
 and artificial. Still the discovery of the American con- 
 tinents by the peoples of the Old World makes a very 
 distinct break in the history of mankind. The surplus 
 population of Europe immediately destroyed the two 
 great civilizations which they encountered in Central 
 and South America, and killed off a great proportion 
 of the inhabitants of the New World, no matter in what
 
 132 MAN AT THE 
 
 state of culture they were found. The revelation of the 
 New World to the Old brought the line of development 
 along which one section of the human race was pro- 
 gressing to a sudden and final stop. For the other 
 sections of the human race it meant relaxation of the 
 pressure against which they were growing by the open- 
 ing of new fields for expansion into which the surplus 
 population could pour out. Together with this, the 
 acquisition of a new source of food, which could be 
 brought back to the congested continents, still further 
 lessened the stress of life. This relaxation of pressure 
 was in itself the opening of a new epoch ; but the epoch 
 was remarkable for other things. The discovery of 
 great and unsuspected material resources of the earth 
 was accompanied by an extension of knowledge of the 
 properties of matter and of means for utilizing natural 
 forces. The discovery of the new lands, of the methods 
 of utilizing steam and electricity, of explosives, of 
 methods of contriving machinery having great mechanical 
 advantage, of biological principles capable of a variety 
 of precise applications, make the present civilization 
 markedly different from any of those that have preceded 
 it. 
 
 To appreciate the effects of these great and com- 
 paratively sudden changes in the condition of the species, 
 it is necessary to understand the state of the world in 
 which they occurred. The three great empires of 
 Assyria, the Hittites, and Egypt, which waxed and waned 
 at the south-west corner of Asia, came after one of the 
 outpourings from the Arabian desert, which profoundly 
 affected neighbouring nations, even those which were 
 not actually overrun. But meanwhile there had been 
 another V olkerzvanderung going on in Northern Asia 
 which resulted in a Chinese civilization and an Indian
 
 PRESENT DAY 133 
 
 civilization. A south-westerly migration by another 
 branch of the same race which broke into India, was 
 divided by seas and mountains into two streams, and 
 directed one upon Persia and the other into south- 
 eastern Europe. The civilization of Semitic origin 
 was swept away by first a Persian wave from east to 
 west, and then a Grecian wave from west to east. 
 After this came a period of comparative quiet from 
 China to Spain, during which civilizations grew and 
 decayed, the one with which we are most familiar being 
 the Mediterranean civilization of the Roman Empire. 
 When this civilization, like those which had preceded 
 it, had passed into decay, it too had to suffer the on- 
 slaughts of another period of effervescence in Arabia 
 and Northern Asia. Turks and Tartars, recoiling before 
 the Chinese armies, moved south-west out of Asia and 
 were met by the flood of Arabs from the southern 
 desert. But the most noticeable feature of this period 
 of migrations was the extent to which white races were 
 forced west to the very limits of Europe. Indeed the 
 whole of the Old World from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 seems to have been in a congested state. 
 
 So far as actual numbers went the population was 
 doubtless much less than to-day. But when the wild 
 races broke bounds and came into the civilized belt, 
 they destroyed the more perfected sources of produc- 
 tion. After the period of wandering and fighting, 
 there came a time of settling, when the nations as we 
 know them to-day were forming and redeveloping 
 the resources of their lands. Production was slow, and 
 populations uneasy and mutually suspicious ; and there 
 were constant wars in which various peoples tried to 
 gain possession of the most fruitful provinces. 
 
 A war is not necessarily a biological event arising out
 
 134 MAN AT THE 
 
 of the tension of civilizations or races. Some wars in 
 the past have resembled the international polo matches 
 of to-day. When w^ar has been a sport fostered by rich 
 patrons who have selected and financed teams to play 
 the game under their own direction, it may have been 
 a nuisance, but has been no part of the national life. 
 Moreover, since the numbers engaged have usually been 
 small and consisted mainly of cosmopolitan mercenaries, 
 and the area of operations has been restricted, national 
 life has been comparatively little affected. This is very 
 different from the death-struggle between two popula- 
 tions whose competition has reached a critical stage. 
 War then is part of the cosmic process : a manifestation 
 of elemental forces at work. 
 
 The first book of Caesar's Commentaries, abhorred of 
 schoolboys, presents an example of these great biological 
 forces in miniature. Caesar at the outset of his Gallic 
 campaigns found that the Helvetii had outgrown their 
 mountain valleys and had decided to seek greater scope 
 at the expense of weaker western neighbours. In a 
 fierce battle he corrected the excess of their population 
 and drove them back whence they had come, only to 
 find that he must now relieve them of the pressure of 
 the Germans further east who were themselves coming 
 west for similar reasons. 
 
 This biological principle underlies many, though not 
 all, of the dynastic struggles which raged through the 
 Middle Ages until recent times. It was the struggle for 
 existence exacerbated by variations in the standard 
 of existence demanded, carried on as the struggle for 
 existence is when human fecundity makes it acute, not 
 between individuals but between communities. During 
 the centuries through which the struggle went on the 
 smaller communities were stamped out or merged into
 
 PRESENT DAY 135 
 
 the more successful, and there came the day of large 
 highly organized nations which, though often at war, 
 maintained areas of quiet where a new culture grew 
 up. A feature in the growing civilization of Europe 
 was the development of mathematical and chemical 
 science. This was largely built out of the debris of the 
 Moorish civilization, itself largely indebted to the 
 Greek, and at first met with much opposition on religious 
 grounds. Indeed it appeared for a time doubtful 
 whether the growing European civilization could 
 accommodate both a Semitic philosophic tradition and 
 a Semitic scientific method. When, however, in the 
 fourteenth century opposing tides of Mongols and 
 Semities met in Western Asia and interrupted the 
 trade-routes between Europe and the Far East, mathe- 
 matical science sought a way by sea round the world 
 which it had proved to be a sphere, and in so doing 
 discovered new continents. Here chemical science 
 stepped in, with explosives and tempered steel, and made 
 the conquest of fresh land easy. From this moment the 
 future of the new civilization was assured, for the 
 tension was relieved in Europe, though the full effects 
 were not experienced until later. Meanwhile in Asia 
 the Turks and Tartars make history complicated ; but 
 as things settled down after the devastating marches of 
 Genghis Khan, Ogatai and Timur, civilization rose to a 
 high level, particularly in China under the Mings and in 
 India under the Mogul emperors. Further east, Japan, 
 which had defeated Kublai Khan's attempt to bring 
 it within the Chinese system, built up yet another 
 civilization. 
 
 The opening up of the new continent came at a time 
 when the tension in the Old World was distressingly 
 high. Nations of mixed population were sufficiently
 
 136 MAN AT THE 
 
 demarcated by difference in language, culture and 
 religion to form compact entities. Increase in popula- 
 tion, exhaustion of land and fear of rivals, tended to offer 
 each nation in turn the choice between severe competi- 
 tion, amounting to a struggle for existence within, or in 
 expansion, a conflict with neighbours equivalent to a 
 struggle for existence between nations. There were 
 wars going on and wars inevitable for land, for trade, and 
 for markets. The East placidly waited for European 
 traders who fought for priority of access and then strove 
 to exercise control. When the new lands were discovered 
 the tension was relieved. The native populations of 
 Australia and South Africa were not able to offer vigorous 
 resistance, and the resistance of the American races was 
 overcome with comparative ease. There was no time 
 wasted in attempting to adjust trading relations between 
 the European and American civilization as there had 
 been between the European and Asiatic civilization. 
 The American civilizations were obliterated by descen- 
 dants of the men who had stamped out the Moorish 
 civilization in Spain, and whose fanaticism destroyed 
 what did not excite their rapacity. The ground was 
 effectively cleared. 
 
 The relief was first felt in the western countries of 
 Europe, namely Portugal, Spain, England and France, 
 by the outlet afforded for their superfluous population. 
 But the enormous wealth brought into Europe eased 
 the tension throughout the whole of the Old World. 
 The amount of plunder the surface wealth of the new 
 lands provided, made armed conflicts between the old 
 countries a sheer waste of time ; and whilst the popula- 
 tion was catching up with the newly discovered resources 
 of the earth by rapid breeding and raising the standard 
 of living, wars became fewer and less severe, until for a
 
 PRESENT DAY 137 
 
 period there was almost a world-peace. It was during 
 this lull in the struggle for existence that modern physical 
 science perfected its control over nature and produced 
 modern industrialism. Human society based itself upon 
 commercialism as it had done in the palmy days of previous 
 civilized periods. 
 
 Then humanity began to readjust itself to the altered 
 situation. The new lands had been parcelled out, after 
 a certain amount of fighting, between the nations of 
 Western Europe, which thought that in their estates 
 they saw security for their posterity. But before long 
 the surface wealth had been stripped from the new lands, 
 and these lands had a population upon them, born on 
 the land, rooted in the land, and faced by the problem 
 of developing the resources of the land. It became 
 evident that as time went on the new lands would require 
 more and more of what they produced for themselves, 
 would be able to export less and less food, and become 
 willing to admit in ever fewer numbers the surplus 
 population from the Old World. Meanwhile, although 
 the East had benefited more or less directly by the 
 wealth of the New World, it had not experienced the 
 same relief. The Manchus had descended into China, 
 and the Russians were pushing east across Siberia. 
 Becoming discontented with the equiHbrium in which 
 their dense populations lived, the Asiatics, too, began to 
 demand the right of entry to the new lands. The popula- 
 tion of Africa might not have helped to complicate the 
 problem had not the first emigrants from Europe 
 introduced negroes as slaves into the New World where 
 numbers of them became feral, and the danger from their 
 irrepressible fecundity was recognized too late. 
 
 The total population of the world soon threatened 
 to catch up with the resources of the new feeding-
 
 138 MAN AT THE 
 
 grounds which had so recently been thrown open. In 
 some localities certain races showed a tendency to abate 
 the rate of their multiplication ; but what comfort 
 could be derived from this was counterbalanced by the 
 raised standard of living and the general uneasiness 
 which the rich and under-populated new continents 
 caused in the Old World by their example of undisciplined 
 prodigality. The time of plenty and the advance of 
 medical science had reduced the stress of life and lowered 
 the death-rate, and with it the quality of the population. 
 A time came -when the growing numbers in the new 
 continents began to raise political and social problems, 
 and the formulae, with which American doctrinaires 
 had been beating the air, made no impression upon 
 these realities, while, simultaneously, the tension in the 
 Old World was becoming scarcely bearable. It became 
 evident that in a congested world the struggle for exist- 
 ence, that is to say, war between nations, must soon 
 begin again. The nations of Eastern Europe which had 
 gained least relief from the discovery of the New World 
 began to devote their increased wealth to arming them- 
 selves for the evil day that they saw coming. 
 
 In Eastern Europe there are two large sections of 
 mankind calling themselves respectively Teutonic and 
 Slav which are conscious of their distinct identity in 
 language, religion, ideals and even a supposed uniformity 
 in their composite populations. It is convenient to 
 adopt the popular habit of referring to the two entities 
 as ' races,' as long as too precise a biological significance 
 is not implied in the word ' race.' These races both 
 set to work to consolidate and take steps to secure their 
 future, showing the elemental preference for eating 
 rather than being eaten. The Slav race first tried to 
 expand towards the south-west and was checked. After
 
 PRESENT DAY 139 
 
 keeping the whole south of Asia in nervous suspense for 
 several years it tried to force its way out to the south-east 
 but was driven back from the warm seaboard there by 
 Japan. After a brief rest to recuperate it turned west 
 again. Meanwhile the Teutonic race, which was fully 
 alive to the danger east of it, was itself feeling a dire 
 need for expansion. Accordingly it pressed on with 
 preparations for the inevitable struggle. It might hold 
 back its Eastern rival and force it to divert its course 
 into another channel, but the only way in which it could 
 hope to be successful was itself to break loose to the 
 westward. Opposed to it here were the nations which 
 had already been relieved towards the west. Their 
 strength had been increased by the new wealth, but 
 diminished by emigration of much of the best stock ; 
 and what is left is an incalculable quantity. Between 
 the fear on the east and the hope on the west the 
 Teutonic race is now struggling for its future, conducting 
 the struggle, as it had prepared for it, with an appallingly 
 biological indifference to the restraints of ' humanity.' 
 The very methods it is employing have done much to 
 increase its peril by stimulating offshoots of its opponents 
 in other parts of the world in their instinctive rally to the 
 assistance of those countries from which they are derived 
 and with whose people they consider themselves allied by 
 common blood and ideals ; while the rich and defenceless 
 nations of the New World are filled with apprehension lest, 
 in a new exploitation by European peoples, they should 
 be treated in the same spirit as their ancestors dealt the 
 aborigines whom they have dispossessed. What the 
 outcome of the present conflict will be none can say, and 
 it is useless attempting to predict the conflicts that will 
 follow when this is settled. It can only be said with 
 certainty that the period of rest which the throwing
 
 I40 MAN AT THE 
 
 open of empty lands gave to a congested world is at an 
 end throughout the habitable globe. 
 
 There are earlier parallels on a smaller scale for the 
 relief of a congested land by the discharge of its surplus 
 population upon new territory ; but the relief of what 
 we call the Old Hemisphere at the expense of the New 
 was an event of a magnitude and importance that are 
 usually undervalued. The development of a system of 
 natural science, that is to say, perception of the pro- 
 perties of matter, and skill in applying such knowledge 
 to utilitarian and aesthetic ends, is also a recurrent 
 phenomenon, appearing at a regular phase in each cycle 
 of civilization. The tendency has been to overestimate 
 the extent and importance of this factor in the present 
 civilization. The difference between the present period 
 of civilization and the preceding ones is mainly one in 
 extent, and its distinctive characteristic a world-wide 
 universality and uniformity. The very versatility of 
 man which so suddenly modifies the conditions under 
 which he lives militates against changes in himself. There 
 is evidence that animal types remain unchanged for long 
 periods of time when the conditions under which they 
 live do not alter. During the period of civilization the 
 conditions of existence and the type of man appear in 
 main essentials to have remained constant within recur- 
 ring cycles. 
 
 There is an immense difference between a long- 
 range, flat-trajectory, magazine rifle and a spear ; but 
 there is no such corresponding difference between the 
 trained and disciplined soldiers of modern Europe and 
 of the Roman Empire. The modern infantry man who 
 uses his rifle mechanically, with no thought of its scientific 
 evolution, is not a better man, indeed he is probably 
 very little different in any way, from the legionary with
 
 PRESENT DAY 141 
 
 his pilum. The mass of mankind uses machinery 
 without understanding its principles ; and increased 
 complexity in the machinery used involves no biological 
 advance in the labourer who uses it. The man who 
 starts and stops a complicated machine by manipulating 
 a switch is not necessarily more intelligent than the 
 man who starts and stops a simpler one by the same 
 means. Similarly a man six feet high, standing on the 
 top of a twenty-storey building, is no greater in his 
 own stature than a man six feet high who stood on the 
 ground immediately beneath him before the edifice 
 was built. Where, as in literature and sculpture, the 
 human mind to-day can gain no great advantage from 
 new mechanical aids to execution, its finest modern 
 achievements, so far from surpassing those of former 
 epochs, are often markedly inferior to the classical 
 masterpieces. The main effect of the recent scientific 
 perfection has been in producing uniformity. The 
 increased rapidity of transport and transmission of ideas 
 to which appliances actuated by steam and electricity 
 have conduced, though partly neutralized by the wider 
 area over which civilization is spread, have had the effect 
 of producing uniformity rather than change. 
 
 The effect upon mankind of achieving rapid results 
 with labour-saving machinery and explosives has, so 
 far as we can tell, been very slight. The roads, mines, 
 canals, bridges and buildings of past civilizations achieved 
 their purpose without such aids being used in their 
 construction. The lack of machinery in times past 
 was balanced by an abundance of cheap slave labour, 
 and production kept pace with demand. Where 
 stability can be compared, to-day has not always an ad- 
 vantage over yesterday. Modern investors make much 
 of the fact that a rubber plantation cannot be expected
 
 142 MAN AT THE 
 
 to return a yield in much less than ten years ; but the 
 capitalists of antiquity were undismayed by the knowledge 
 that their vast oHve plantations could not give them a 
 return in less than eighteen years. Even printing with 
 movable type has probably made less change by the 
 dissemination of information than the ingenuity exercised 
 in elaborating the mechanism would seem to warrant. 
 We know with what rapidity an army of trained slave 
 copyists could produce a manuscript edition of a new 
 book in the days of the Roman Empire. An ofhcial 
 version of the news of the day {acta diurna) was written 
 up where the public could read it, and the wealthy 
 classes sent their slaves to make private copies for them, 
 so that in principle the daily newspaper is older than 
 printing — older, indeed, than the present civilization. 
 At a corresponding phase in great civilizations we find 
 public funds devoted to education, and an ability to 
 read and write almost universal. It was so in ancient 
 Babylon as in Imperial Rome. Aristophanes could not 
 find anyone in Athens unable to read and write, and 
 seems to regard the ignorant literary of his day as a 
 nuisance. The effect of printing has been rather to 
 cheapen expression and make the ignorance of mankind 
 as a whole articulate, than to raise the intellectual 
 standard of the species. The masterpieces of the human 
 mind are now within the means of the poorest, but the 
 main output of the printing press is designed for com- 
 mercial reasons to amuse and flatter the masses without 
 educating them. To appreciate this one has only 
 to consider the picture postcards, the cheap prints and 
 reprints of books, and the type of newspaper, comic or 
 pretentious, which have the largest sale. 
 
 But though there is no physical or mental change 
 in the human animal traceable to the civilization phase
 
 PRESENT DAY 143 
 
 of his occupation of the globe, there has been a general 
 extension of his more successful methods. These, as 
 they become uniform and universal, instead of, as they 
 were formerly, diverse and local, must affect his destiny 
 profoundly. We have seen how in the pre-civilization 
 period man's versatility led to his acquiring a greater 
 power of coping with his environment than was necessary 
 merely to hold his own against nature. We have seen 
 how during the civilization period man first enlarged 
 the capacity of the territory at his disposal by cultiva- 
 tion and engineering, and then with the encouragement 
 this gave to his multiplication filled up the extra space 
 he had gained. We have later seen how man has 
 recently opened up new continents and increased his 
 knowledge of how to deal with the material resources 
 of the earth, so that he was again able to make a fresh 
 start with space and resources in advance of his needs. 
 Now at last we see that the process cannot be repeated 
 indefinitely, and that man is to be faced at no distant 
 day with a need for establishing and maintaining an 
 equilibrium with nature, since he will no longer have 
 powers or resources in excess of his needs. Several 
 times this situation has been observed before locally. 
 Can we from past happenings on a small scale form any 
 idea of what is in store for an overpopulated world in 
 which, thanks to the rapidity of transport and quick 
 transference of ideas, the operation of civilized methods 
 will be uniform ? 
 
 The present civilization is on a large scale and has 
 of late years been moving fast. One cannot fail to be 
 struck by the resemblance between this ' progress ' and 
 the process of decay which, from its invariable recurrence 
 in the cycle of previous civilizations, appears to be the 
 normal method of decline. So far as we can subdivide
 
 144 MAN AT THE 
 
 national life into separate functions a subtle deteriora- 
 tion appears common to all. Man as an individual 
 cannot resist natural forces except as a component or 
 parasitic member of a community. Consequently the 
 individualistic instinct, no matter how important in 
 itself, must be sufficiently subordinated to the social 
 instinct to ensure the safety of the State. Yet every- 
 where to-day we see individualism undermining 
 organization. 
 
 The political history of nations is always interesting 
 and deserving of careful study ; but its value is very 
 greatly dependent upon the point of view. National 
 institutions and forms of government when regarded 
 as forces which direct human development can teach 
 much. But it is a great mistake to consider them only 
 as agents influencing the population actively from with- 
 out. The political history of a people is no less in- 
 structive when investigated with a view to ascertaining 
 its biological history by a series of recognizable indica- 
 tions. A well-balanced sense of proportion is necessary 
 for giving the two views their proper value. The 
 history of an individual man can be, indeed should be, 
 studied in the same way. On the one hand, his acts 
 can be examined as the causes which raised him to 
 fortune or led him to his undoing. On the other hand, 
 they can be regarded as evidences of his temperament 
 and ability, of the varying conditions of his health and 
 of the succeeding phases of his youth, maturity, and 
 senility. 
 
 Viewing politics and outward forms of government 
 only as symbols of fundamental biological facts, they 
 are, from the precision with which they are defined, 
 extremely useful for comparison and important as 
 indicators. Civilization is essentially a system of control
 
 PRESENT DAY 145 
 
 and direction, developing with economy the full poten- 
 tial of a population and its environment. The system 
 started with a conquering race cracking the whip over 
 the head of a subject population, but has grown until 
 all men alike are slaves of the system. When, at recurring 
 periods in the past, this point has been reached, the 
 system has weakened because it could not provide the 
 necessary control from within. 
 
 So long as a despotic form of government retains 
 its health and vigour it is probably the most effective. 
 Regarding the State simply as a machine, absolutism is 
 probably the most satisfactory agent for driving it, for 
 the continuity and economy with which the nation 
 can be controlled makes it possible to attain very great 
 efficiency. Both industrial and military power can be 
 developed to the highest pitch. But its very perfection 
 is apt to be inhuman and repellent. No matter how 
 great its success may be at first, there comes sooner or 
 later a time when the directing power becomes de- 
 centralized and dissipated. 
 
 The basic weakness in civilization lies in the deeply 
 rooted predatory instinct in human nature. Once 
 civilization is established there is spoil for plunderers 
 from within as well as from without. No section of the 
 people can resist the temptation to exploit civilization 
 when such an enterprise appears safe. The original 
 conquerors, who form the first directors or aristocracy, 
 are, to begin with, in the happy position of having got 
 what everyone wants. However, they are never content 
 to devote their whole energies to increasing the value 
 of their property and protecting it from outside spoHa- 
 tion. Invariably they fight over the spoil among 
 themselves. Our own Wars of the Roses, the civil wars 
 in Rome, the fratricidal strife of Akbar's descendants,
 
 146 MAN AT THE 
 
 the conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans in 
 Japan, and the contest which was raging between 
 Atahualpa and Huasco when the Spaniards reached 
 Peru, are among the more famiHar instances of how 
 civihzations can be weakened by avarice overcoming 
 the discretion of a ruHng caste distinct from the mass of 
 the people. At a later stage in the cycle of a civiliza- 
 tion the distinction between rulers and ruled is less 
 marked. The slavery of all under the system they have 
 together built up is equalized and every man cherishes 
 hopes of plunder. 
 
 The course of the great majority of civilizations, 
 whose history we know well enough for comparison, has 
 run from hereditary monarchy to aristocracy, and then 
 to a time when the populace set about arranging the 
 government for their own profit. Popular methods of 
 plundering at first took the form of faction strife. Some 
 factions started from the outset upon a straightforward 
 career of brigandage ; others strove to prey upon the 
 bulk of the nation by fighting for some man whom they 
 chose as their candidate for the throne, or purple, or 
 caliphate, or shogunate, or presidency, or whatever 
 the symbol of the flesh-hook might be. It is often a 
 fine point for the historian to decide whether the 
 leaders who, when crowned with victory, were to dis- 
 tribute rewards to those who had placed them on a 
 throne, or the section of the populace who speculated 
 in their success, were really the dupes. When, however, 
 we see a nation without a royal house or an aristocracy 
 capable of imposing uniform rule on the whole by 
 force, but instead a quick succession of rulers being set 
 up and deposed as fortune favours one or other of a 
 number of greedy factions, we recognize a definite 
 stage in decay, and know that, unless a central and
 
 PRESENT DAY 
 
 147 
 
 independent control over the populace is shortly supplied 
 from without, disruption of the system is imminent. 
 
 The peculiarities of the Greek character and environ- 
 ment led, however, to their elaborating another method 
 by which a civilization could devour its own vitals. 
 
 In the classical example we see politicians greedy 
 for the spoils of office, demoralizing the proletariat with 
 stolen money. Greek taste and Greek levity determine 
 the nature of the bribe, and the iniquity of the transac- 
 tion is disguised by its elegance. But the money is 
 found by the misappropriation of the funds that allied 
 cities of the Delian league subscribe towards prepara- 
 tion for war with Persia. The method employed is 
 to spend this money upon fine buildings and statues 
 with which Athens is adorned like a " light and vain 
 woman decking herself with ill-gotten jewels," and to 
 make law and politics well paid pastimes for any Athenian 
 with a distaste for work. The result is disaster. 
 Thanks to the example of Athens, ' democracy ' has 
 become extremely popular with the nations of Western 
 Europe, and from them promises to extend over the 
 whole world. When the control and guidance necessary 
 to civilization are dependent upon popular choice, the 
 qualities which place men in the position of rulers are 
 not a capacity for enforcing their wills and overcoming 
 opposition, but ingenuity in flattering and cajoling 
 the people whose voices can reward their plausibility. 
 The way in which a system decays when the democratic 
 form prevails, is identical in principle with the course 
 of events in the old-fashioned empire. At first rulers 
 from among the aristocratic caste are chosen by the 
 popular vote. In this early stage the results obtained 
 by the democratic method are often good. The 
 voters all have to be men of some consequence in the
 
 148 MAN AT THE 
 
 State — men who can make their opinions felt by force 
 if necessary, and who will only withdraw their opposition 
 when convinced that they are in a hopeless minority. 
 The rulers chosen are men who by birth, education and 
 tradition are fitted for their responsibilities ; and from 
 their fortunate position are not to be tempted by small 
 bribes or frightened by risk of small losses. Even the 
 rewards of office lie more in privilege than in perquisites. 
 By these means a government with power and intelli- 
 gence is obtained. The electorate chooses the man in 
 whom it has the most confidence, and trusts the govern- 
 ment in his hands. Hence the chief qualifications looked 
 for in a candidate are wisdom and probity. 
 
 In Rousseau's opinion : " S'il y avait un peuple de 
 dieux il se gouvernerait democratiquement," but " Un 
 gouvernement si parfait ne convient pas a des hommes." 
 
 In the earlier stages of democratic evolution candi- 
 dates are put forward by large and organized sections 
 of the population ; much as in the struggles within a 
 kingdom, princes are chosen to head large factions, or 
 great soldiers lead whole provinces in revolt. In each 
 case the man has a following because he represents large 
 interests in the State. What those interests require is 
 not necessarily the man with the most powerful in- 
 dividuality. Rival parties in a democratic State may 
 withdraw candidates of strong individuality and com- 
 promise by placing the government in the hands of a 
 nonentity as feeble as chance could possibly bring to an 
 hereditary throne. Yet in the main the requirements 
 of the State are deliberately met. But the republican 
 form of government is peculiarly liable to rapid decay. 
 There is no possibility of restricting the extension of 
 its scope owing to the bribes unscrupulous candidates 
 will offer in return for election. Eventually every
 
 PRESENT DAY 149 
 
 citizen, no matter how ignorant and devoid of force, 
 has a vote, and any candidate, no matter how lacking 
 in intelligence and capacity, is eligible for election. 
 There is now possibility of direct appeal by individuals 
 to the mob. The condition of a democracy when it 
 has sunk to this level is parallel with that of a monarchy 
 which has become so weak that numbers of adventurers 
 keep cropping up and starting a predatory career, each 
 with a mere handful of banditti. The failure of de- 
 mocratic government when pushed to its logical con- 
 clusion has been seen time after time, and the reasons 
 for its failure are obvious. 
 
 Civilization needs intelligent, no less than inde- 
 pendent, power for its control. Hardly sufficient 
 stress has, perhaps, been laid in the preceding pages 
 upon the influence which individuals with exceptional 
 powers of mind or will can exert upon the destiny of 
 a race or the conflict between races. It is hard to see 
 how Athens would have risen from being a mere town 
 to the position of the chief power in the Mediterranean 
 without the alternate leading and driving of Themistocles 
 during the critical years. Nor can we imagine what 
 Japan would have become without Yoritomo. The 
 whole course of South American history was set by the 
 guiding personality of the great Pachacuti. And we 
 cannot even guess what would have been the fate of 
 Eastern Europe and the whole of Asia, one might almost 
 say the whole world, if Jenghis Khan had died in 
 infancy. Indeed the advance of the masses of mankind 
 has been dependent throughout upon exceptional 
 individuals who have been leaders or teachers. 
 
 At a recent meeting of the British Association the 
 president put one aspect of this very forcibly. " Annul 
 the work of a few hundreds — I might almost say scores
 
 I50 MAN AT THE 
 
 — of men and on what plane of civilization should we be ? 
 We should not have advanced beyond the mediaeval 
 stage without printing, chemistry, steam, electricity, 
 or surgery worthy the name. . . . To improve by 
 subordinate invention, to discover details missed, even 
 to apply knowledge never before applied, all these 
 things need genius in some degree, and are far beyond 
 the powers of the average man of our race ; but the 
 true pioneer, the man whose penetration creates a new 
 world, as did that of Newton and of Pasteur, is incon- 
 ceivably rare. But for a few thousands of such men, 
 we should perhaps be in the Palaeolithic era, knowing 
 neither metals, writing, arithmetic, weaving, nor 
 pottery." 
 
 The guidance of the community must be entrusted 
 to a few hands, and any population which has not lost 
 its vitality can produce some men capable of giving it 
 a lead. But the benefit which the community can 
 derive from the exceptionally endowed individual is 
 dependent upon his freedom of action. The ruler set 
 up by popular vote is powerless to exercise control. 
 He owes his position to a bargain with those who elected 
 him, and the moment they are dissatisfied with him he 
 must go. As in the earlier stages of democratic de- 
 velopment the most frequent bribes offered by candi- 
 dates to electors are extensions of the franchise ; before 
 long every citizen has a vote. But with suffrage uni- 
 versal all voters have not the same value, and a man 
 elected by a popular majority may find himself faced 
 by the choice between disappointing his supporters, 
 who will at once discard him, or displeasing a powerful 
 minority, who, if pushed far enough, will readjust 
 values in the State by a revolution. It is hardly possible 
 for a man with intelligence and integrity to rule in an
 
 PRESENT DAY 151 
 
 advanced democracy. He is prevented from exercising 
 foresight in accordance with his own enHghtened judg- 
 ment, because he holds ofhce in virtue of his readiness 
 to give immediate effect to the will of the people. The 
 will of the people varies remarkably little in all de- 
 mocracies as they develop. In the earlier stages it may 
 have been that the man they believe to be wisest shall 
 solve the problems of the State ; but later, as the 
 problems grow harder to understand, it is that they 
 shall be accorded immediate enjoyment of the nation's 
 wealth regardless of provision for the future. Accord- 
 ingly the capital on which the nation's production 
 depends is squandered in order to save money for 
 luxuries, and the armaments which guarantee its 
 safety are not maintained in adequate strength on the 
 ground of expense. Competition in how far different 
 statesmen will go in meeting these demands, ends in 
 awarding the prize of office to the greatest rascal ; 
 and as democracies gain in experience they hold their 
 rulers in greater and greater contempt. There is a 
 Turkish proverb to the effect that nations in decay 
 continue producing men of ability after they fail to 
 produce men of character. The decay must have gone 
 far indeed when men of character are no longer pro- 
 duced. The observation embodied in the proverb is 
 probably that in certain conditions men can neither 
 lead nor advise by direct methods and plain speech. 
 Even a single-minded patriot must gain the nation's 
 ends by intrigue, flattery, compromise and cajolery. 
 These are degrading instruments, and if there are honest 
 men among those habitually using them they do not 
 appear heroic, indeed it is not easy to distinguish them 
 from the rogues. 
 
 The more democratic a democracy becomes the
 
 152 MAN AT THE 
 
 shorter grow the terms of office, and the more rapidly 
 are succeeding rulers set up and cast down. The corre- 
 sponding forms in the decay of the older type of civiliza- 
 tion were slower and more merciful. The prospective 
 plunderer of the State who took the sword was likely to 
 perish by the sword, whether he were prince or low-born 
 brigand; but it was by the defection of his followers, many 
 of whom in spite of their disappointment would remain 
 faithful and perish with him. The hero of democracy 
 who gains by the vote is likely to perish by the hands 
 or missiles of the voters, and find at the end that his 
 former supporters are his bitterest assailants. The 
 cause is the same : the inability of the man who is 
 trying to fulfil promises to compete with the man who 
 is as yet only making them. 
 
 Of course the path of democratic development is 
 not a smooth one or free from the possibilities of re- 
 action. Just when the masses believe that, having 
 thrown down everyone whose head and shoulders rose 
 above the crowd, they have the control of their fate in 
 their own hands, they sometimes find that they are 
 really in the hands of an oligarchy of party leaders 
 who are disposing of them in a wholly arbitrary manner. 
 The heads of great political organizations sometimes 
 remind one in their conduct of dishonest pugilists who, 
 after arranging the division of the purse, the gate, and 
 the picture rights more or less amicably in the dressing- 
 room, defraud the public with a ' faked fight.' The 
 amount of realism achieved in the fight is very variable 
 locally, and sometimes, particularly of late in South 
 America, the principals have cynically refused to enter 
 the ring at all, and any of the assembled spectators who 
 have been foolish enough to demand their money back 
 at the doors have been dispersed by the police.
 
 PRESENT DAY 153 
 
 But at this stage it is not only the politicians who 
 are preying on the State. The princely pretenders to 
 thrones, military adventurers, and demagogues have 
 their counterpart in business organizations. Combina- 
 tions of capitalists, the individuals varying in numbers 
 and wealth, are formed which, so far from identifying 
 the prosperity of their enterprise with the security of 
 the State, may deliberately turn their resources to 
 plundering their fellow-citizens. If the government 
 which should control these ' combines ' is being carried 
 on by men who have neither names which they wish to 
 hand on untarnished nor a competence which places 
 them above threats or temptation, the State is defence- 
 less. Not only is it possible to sway the voters, but 
 the ' combine ' can usually buy what it wants, if not 
 from the government at least from the men who carry 
 weight in it. The confusion only becomes worse if some 
 of these organizations are so successful that at length 
 their interests and power actually become almost 
 co-extensive with those of the State, and an idealistic 
 reformer tends rather to disturb than to restore national 
 stability by opposing their illicit acts. 
 
 So much for the inability of democracy as of any 
 other form of decaying civilization to supply the force 
 for the necessary control from within. Things are no 
 better when we consider the question of intelligence 
 and honesty. When the leaders are chosen from the 
 privileged classes, the height at which they have lived, 
 even though it does not imply intellectual superiority, 
 has given them a wider outlook upon life and facilitated 
 the forming of broader views than are possible to the 
 man whose main preoccupation has hitherto been to 
 get enough to eat. The man who is born to a high 
 probability of ruling almost inevitably comes into power
 
 154 MAN AT THE 
 
 after some preparation for the office he is to hold. But 
 in an advanced democracy the people have ceased to 
 regard the offices of government as posts which require 
 to be filled with the most competent men for the benefit 
 of the whole State ; and have come instead to regard 
 them as prizes for individual effort which all com- 
 petitors should be given an equal chance of winning. 
 It is further regarded as quite natural that those who 
 obtain them should do all in their power to increase 
 their value. Since the difference between the spoils 
 of government and the rewards of industry is vastly 
 in favour of the former, the cleverest as well as the 
 most ambitious men may be diverted from other trades 
 into politics. This has its advantages. The more 
 advanced a civilization becomes the more complex 
 and technical are the problems it has to solve, and 
 consequently the greater need has it for the man of 
 genius. The country, it is then argued, cannot afford 
 to waste natural talent or special training in any in- 
 dividual no matter to what station of society he belongs. 
 Unfortunately the humbler aspirants for lucrative 
 posts are likely, as Carlyle laments, to expend so much 
 time and energy in attaining offices of State that they 
 have none left with which to qualify for holding them. 
 On the other hand, the task of discovering men of 
 trained ability is not one that can be safely left to the 
 masses. Profound knowledge of a difficult subject is 
 no passport to popularity with the uninstructed multi- 
 tude ; and if, when experts differ on highly technical 
 problems, the largest and most ignorant section of the 
 people are allowed to decide between them, this means 
 leaving matters of the utmost importance to chance. 
 Having no knowledge of the real nature of the difficulties, 
 the court of final appeal solves them upon irrelevant
 
 PRESENT DAY 155 
 
 considerations. The more completely the rulers repre- 
 sent the people the more is the direction of civilization 
 transferred from the intellect to the animal appetites. 
 
 In proportion as the rulers represent a force from 
 within the people instead of an independent force 
 superior to the people, do we find their careers becoming 
 short and precarious. Even a man who served his city 
 so well as Pericles, is fined and degraded by the Athenians, 
 though indeed he had amends made to him later, and 
 further had the good fortune to die at a moment when 
 he was popular. A later stage is seen in Cleon who 
 perished miserably, whether through incompetence 
 for the position he had gained, or because he dared not 
 offend his own soldiers by refusing to give orders they 
 were pleased to obey, is still disputed. It is noteworthy 
 that the lower the origin of a democratic hero and the 
 more spectacular his service to democracy, the more 
 likely he seems to be killed, as were the leaders of the 
 French Revolution, by the populace whose darling he 
 has been. It is interesting to note how the men of 
 genius whom Athens produced in her democratic 
 days nearly all were hounded to death or died in exile. 
 It is therefore as one might expect. When the original 
 masters and slaves have become merged in one uniform 
 slavery to the system they have built up, individual 
 rulers tend to disappear, the controlling force is vested 
 in the mass of the people and by them dissipated until the 
 civilization disintegrates. The only influence which is 
 active in maintaining discipline and organization in a 
 highly developed civilization is fear of powerful neigh- 
 bours. History abounds with instances of national 
 revival in face of a danger threatening from without. 
 Rome, torn by bitter political strife, suddenly setting 
 her house in order at the approach of the Cimbri, and
 
 156 MAN AT THE 
 
 after the danger has been met reverting to civil wars 
 and proscriptions, is one familiar instance. Fear of 
 an attack from without alone keeps the social instinct 
 above the individualistic in a community ; and as a 
 civilization is perfected and extended this fear becomes 
 lost. 
 
 Though danger may regenerate a decaying nation, 
 the activities of competing politicians make a demo- 
 cratic people peculiarly vulnerable to attack from with- 
 out, since the nation's peril is the professional politician's 
 opportunity. The importance of demagogues must 
 not be exaggerated. Like fungi on a dunghill they are 
 the consequence, not the cause of the mass of corruption. 
 Yet they are a very real source of weakness to the 
 organism on which they prey. 
 
 A feature in the competition between needy and 
 rapacious politicians is a tendency to impute low 
 motives to one another. No statesman can advise 
 the nation to adopt measures for its safety or advantage 
 without his political opponents declaring that his advice 
 is prompted by self-interest, and dismissing the condi- 
 tions which evoked it as fictitious. We are indebted for 
 an excellent specimen of this to Thucydides. When the 
 great fleet of warships and transports had already sailed 
 from Athens and was on its way to attack Syracuse, the 
 Sicilian demagogue Athenagoras professed to regard 
 the information regarding it with incredulity, deriding 
 the Athenian bogey as an invention of a plotting aris- 
 tocracy. He denounced those who were urging their 
 countrymen to make provision for the defence of the 
 city : " I wonder less at their audacity than at their 
 folly, if they flatter themselves that we do not see through 
 them. The fact is that they have their private reasons 
 to be afraid, and wish to throw the city into consterna-
 
 PRESENT DAY 157 
 
 tion to have their own terrors cast into the shade by the 
 pubhc alarm. In short, this is what these reports are 
 worth ; they do not arise of themselves, but are con- 
 cocted by men who are always causing agitation here in 
 Sicily." — And so on at considerable length. — " Nor is 
 this the first time that I see these persons, when they 
 cannot resort to deeds, trying by such stories and by 
 others even more abominable to frighten your people 
 and get into their hands the government : it is what I 
 see always." This is naturally followed by the offer : 
 " However, I will try, if you will support me, to let 
 nothing of this happen in our time, by gaining you, the 
 many, and by chastising the authors of such machina- 
 tions, not merely when they are caught in the act — 
 a difficult feat to accomplish — but also for what they have 
 the wish though not the power to do ; as it is necessary 
 to punish an enemy not only for what he does, but also 
 beforehand for what he intends to do, if the first to 
 relax precautions would not be also the first to suffer." * 
 Yet Athenagoras was not a conscious humorist. He 
 really was, doubtless, much more afraid of being fore- 
 stalled in his precautions for his own well-being by his 
 fellow-citizens than by the Athenian army which so soon 
 after was besieging Syracuse. Athenagoras is a familiar 
 type, and we know that he often fears his rival within the 
 city more than the enemy without, even when the danger 
 is an admitted fact. 
 
 The military adventurer is particularly dreaded by 
 the democratic politician because he is of necessity 
 what the demagogue frequently is not : a man of real 
 force and ability, and his power while it lasts is more 
 secure. He may be a great scoundrel, but he is rarely 
 a fool, for soldiers' support is gained by deeds not words. 
 
 ' Crawley's translation.
 
 ,58 MAN AT THE 
 
 A Claudius may be made emperor by a whim of pretorians 
 whether he Hkes it or not, but he does not receive their 
 favours if he asks for them. 
 
 When a civiHzation is far gone in decay it frequently 
 before disruption falls into the hands of its own army 
 and thereby sometimes gains a new lease of life. As 
 the political life within becomes more corrupt, the 
 frontiers are more frequently assailed and its armies 
 collect behind them and gain in efficiency. The army 
 is usually the least degenerate part of the population 
 for obvious reasons. The men have to be of good 
 physique. For fear of the enemy before them, they 
 have to observe strict discipline and maintain highly 
 technical skill. Soldiers are inured to hardship, familiar 
 with danger, and severe upon incompetence. They are 
 obliged to live at a distance from the dissolute capital. 
 Man for man the soldiers are better than the masses, 
 and the officers than the politicians; and when they 
 realize this, especially if they believe, rightly or wrongly, 
 that the chief awards of their valour are reaped by corrupt 
 rulers and a venal populace, they are liable to discover 
 their collective power and use it. A Jehu, a Caesar or 
 a Napoleon ' saves the State.' Democratic government 
 with or without an effete monarchy gives place to a 
 military despotism very frequently in the cycles of 
 history. 
 
 For this reason decaying nations often hasten their 
 fate by becoming afraid of their own most successful 
 soldiers, especially when they have had repeated ex- 
 perience of being ' saved ' by them. Corruption and 
 jealousy at Carthage neutralized the military genius 
 of Hannibal and led to the ultimate triumph of Rome. 
 Jealousy and corruption in the court at Peking brought 
 about the fall of Tingbi, the only Chinese general
 
 PRESENT DAY 159 
 
 in whom Nurhachu recognized that he had met his 
 match, and so led to the ultimate triumph of the 
 Manchus. 
 
 The process of decay when once it has set in goes on 
 regardless of names and terms. The essentials of civiliza- 
 tion are very little affected by forms monarchical or 
 republican, military or democratic. When the offices 
 of government are prizes to be bestowed by the people 
 on their favourites, their caprice makes order impossible 
 by insecurity of rulers. The man who contrives that 
 power shall be given him by the acclamation of either 
 mob or army, is always in danger of being outdone in 
 the same way by another of his own kind. 
 
 At the present day different countries throughout 
 the world exhibit different forms of decay ; but the 
 decay is everywhere to be seen. In some places, both 
 in the New World and in the Old, the factions of dis- 
 integrating civilization strive after the manner of 
 brigands ; in other regions the more individualistic 
 democratic method is to be observed. In Mexico and 
 the United States they have recently been exhibited 
 side by side. On the whole the democratic method 
 seems more characteristic of the civilization of to-day 
 and appears to be gaining ground in all directions. In 
 type it tends more to resemble the Athenian than the 
 Roman model. The Roman civilization long retained 
 the services of experts who could give to the wildest 
 demands of the populace some semblance of ordered 
 legal form ; but the inconsequent freaks of the Greek 
 popular assembly, even though there was a slave element 
 of society not represented in it, are very near to the 
 chaos with which progress towards universal suffrage 
 threatens democracies of to-day. It is important to 
 remember this, for the career of Athenian democracy
 
 i6o MAN AT THE 
 
 was not only disastrous but brief. The multiplication 
 of so-called republics, the demand for democratic 
 forms, which seems most violent in the most aristo- 
 cratically governed populations, and the labour unrest 
 which is threatening the stabiHty of every government, 
 all seem to point to an acceleration in the confusion of 
 social organization. 
 
 Whether the war in which many nations are now 
 involved will end, as some expect, in making democracy 
 prevalent throughout the world, or, as others beHeve, 
 in a revival of concentration of power on a military 
 basis, only time can show. For whether the world is 
 entering upon a period of stricter or slacker control 
 is a question altogether distinct from that as to which 
 group of the nations now embroiled will emerge 
 victorious. The world undoubtedly suffered in general 
 morale from the example of peoples in the New World 
 as well as from the relief of pressure and new sources 
 of supplies. The present war marks an approaching 
 equilibrium between population and the resources of 
 the world, and it may possibly lead to a reconsidera- 
 tion throughout the world of the rights and duties of 
 individuals. Men may have to regulate their conduct 
 more with regard to one another than was thought 
 necessary in the days when both space and wealth 
 appeared unlimited. Before now citizens have learnt 
 discipline in their own armies during a narrow escape 
 from being conquered by a foreign force. Western 
 Europe is to-day endeavouring to repeat the process 
 so often seen before of turning the tables upon an 
 enemy by adopting his methods. If the discipline and 
 material efficiency with which Germany has lately 
 astonished the world are successfully copied by the 
 allied nations opposed to her, it is to be hoped that the
 
 PRESENT DAY i6i 
 
 cynical bad faith and ruthless brutality which have 
 disgraced without advancing the German conduct of 
 the war will not be acquired as part of the lesson. And 
 always it should be remembered that after an achieve- 
 ment requiring great national efforts and sacrifices, 
 there is liable to be a reaction. 
 
 Self-control is an ideal after which many nations 
 have striven, but which none has been able to realize. 
 Already it appears as though mankind was coming to 
 view civilization with disfavour. During a trial of 
 several thousand years it has proved only a cycle of 
 recurring disappointments owing to its inevitable 
 failure along one of two diverging lines of development. 
 Either the machinery of civilization becomes too perfect 
 and the control too complete, in which case man becomes 
 dehumanized as we see in Germany ; or else man is 
 so exalted over the machine that a multitude of inexpert 
 or wanton hands reduces it to wreckage, as we see in 
 those States where freedom leads to chaos. In either 
 alternative civilization is unstable and foredoomed. 
 Yet experience has shown that it requires great courage 
 and energy to break free from an established servitude 
 no matter how hateful. The attempt involves grave 
 risks, and even if successful may lead only into a track- 
 less wilderness full of perils where the flesh-pots of 
 Egypt are soon regretted. 
 
 From politics we turn naturally to reHgion. Indeed, 
 religion should possibly have been given precedence of 
 politics, for though ' hunger and avarice ' are the impel- 
 ling forceswhich drive races to conquest and construction, 
 "religion supplies the essential unity and central power." 
 
 Religion grew out of the constant mystification of 
 early members of the human group before the pheno- 
 mena of nature, and is a deep-rooted instinct in man.
 
 i62 ■ MAN AT THE 
 
 But the religious capacity of men of divers races and 
 in different phases of particular civilizations varies to 
 an extraordinary degree. Most of their gods are gods 
 of a family or a sect, a nation, a class or a trade. The 
 God of the average man is either a family deity, like the 
 god of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, or a national 
 fetish hke that worshipped by a German Kaiser, or a 
 fantastic creature who, ignoring social and national 
 distinctions, will rule, if not this world, at least the 
 world to come in the exclusive interests of a sect in one 
 of the London suburbs. The men whose god is uni- 
 versal, and has a purpose in which the whole universe 
 as we know it is only a detail of a scheme infinitely 
 beyond the scope of the human mind, are like men of 
 genius, beings peculiar to no one race or civilization, 
 and far beyond the comprehension of the ordinary man 
 of any place or period. 
 
 The foundations of civilization have always depended 
 upon religious organization ; but with the continued 
 growth of civilization the national religion decays. 
 Sometimes it becomes debased, and the priesthood is 
 known to be mercenary and insincere ; sometimes the 
 primitive tribal lore is refined, until it is raised to a 
 height of spirituality which puzzles and repels the 
 masses. In either case it ceases to be a system of 
 national conservation and defence, the common policy 
 which must be successful, because it embodies the re- 
 vealed will of the patron deity. It becomes instead a 
 carcass for every crow to pick at. The tendency of 
 groups of individuals to dissent from the religious life 
 of the nation comes with the increasing individualism 
 at a definite stage of national growth. Individuals, 
 instead of striving to reform what they disapprove of 
 in the State religion, detach themselves to constitute
 
 PRESENT DAY i6 
 
 J 
 
 little societies whose object is to gain personal and 
 exclusive advantages from their supposed superior 
 knowledge of how to manipulate the supernatural. 
 
 In every great civilization, religion is the foundation 
 of the system, and we find intimate relations between 
 the government and the hierarchy. If at the head of 
 the State there is one man, say an emperor, he is, if not 
 actually deified, at least regarded as the 'Lord's anointed.' 
 When a nation is on the upgrade the head of the State 
 generally aims at being the recognized head of the 
 Church. The demand that divine honours should be 
 paid to such men as Alexander and the Roman emperors 
 during the most critical years of their lives, was due not 
 to personal vanity, but to far-sighted statesmanship. 
 In every great civilization, provided it lasts long enough, 
 we see in the multiplication of religious nonconformists 
 a symptom of its decay. We know the process best in 
 detail in Imperial Rome, in ancient Greece, and in the 
 decadent Caliphate. In each case we see that while 
 on the one hand an impatience of learning and authority 
 together with individualistic pride carries the larger and 
 more ignorant part of the nonconformists in the direc- 
 tion of gross superstition, on the other hand the growth 
 of learning leads the more intellectual to scepticism by 
 discrediting the supernatural basis of the cult. The 
 attempts to apply a knowledge of the supernatural to 
 purposes of selfish gain, degrade religion into magic 
 and witchcraft, and minister to the depravity of the 
 lower sections of the populace ; while the inabihty to 
 accept the mystical explanations of the phenomena 
 open to investigation by intellectual processes alienates 
 the thinkers. Between the defection of the most ignorant 
 and unsocial in the one direction and the most learned 
 and influential in the other, religion is weakened until
 
 1 64 MAN AT THE 
 
 the nation is without the stimulus of ritual and the 
 restraint of doctrine on which its national life was 
 dependent. All endeavours to substitute a reasoned 
 system of ethics for the sanctions of divine ordinance 
 have hitherto been failures. Even in China this is so. 
 The ethical philosophy of Confucius, great as is its 
 hold upon the people, leaves a void which religion or 
 some form of superstition is called upon to fill. Indeed 
 abstract principles demand too much of mankind in the 
 mass, and ethical considerations without a religious 
 basis are at present as ineffectual in the spiritual sphere 
 as, when without fixed points to act from, they are in 
 the political. This may be because it is so very difficult 
 to discover what really is ethically or politically sound 
 except by prolonged experiment. Results so obtained 
 are apt to take the form of creeds or constitutions 
 embodying truths so hard-won that, even when the 
 external forms are outworn, the cautious regard their 
 revision with misgiving. 
 
 Much that styles itself intellectual agnosticism has 
 no right to the title intellectual, being indeed rather a 
 manifestation of ignorance. The repudiation of the 
 national religion is, in these cases, an attempt to gain 
 freedom from moral restraints by those who often 
 cannot free themselves from gross superstition of the 
 spirit-rapping and table-turning order. 
 
 Religions, forms of ritual, and popular philosophies 
 are among the most durable and adaptable of human 
 products. Civilizations pilfer them from the debris 
 of their predecessors for modification and adoption 
 more often than any other relics. Pythagoras, Zoroaster, 
 Confucius and Lao-tsze, Gautama and Vard-hamana 
 all lived about the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., 
 but are identified with trends of religious and philo-
 
 PRESENT DAY 165 
 
 Sophie thought active to-day. What is fundamental in 
 these cults probably did not orginate even so recently 
 as their supposed founders. Confucius certainly did 
 not regard himself as an innovator. He declared that 
 in teaching he v^^as only passing on the lessons of anti- 
 quity. Their significance lies in the spirit in which they 
 are applied at any given moment in a people's history, 
 for according to the phase of national health almost 
 any religion seems to serve equally well as a basis for 
 common patriotism, or as a back door by which individ- 
 uals may escape from their duties to the State. 
 
 Over and over again, when a civilization has attained 
 its object and its conquest over the problem of its 
 environment has been achieved, do we see a wave of 
 petulant disappointment threaten to submerge the 
 people. In how many old civilizations has not one 
 manifestation of this been an outbreak of religious 
 asceticism : a weary decision to throw away all that is 
 worth having in life, to avoid the trouble of preserving 
 it, to strive no more because prizes are hard to gain 
 and bring no satisfaction, to contribute nothing to the 
 maintenance of the State, but to live by the bounty of 
 those who continue to hold society together ? Mendi- 
 cant asceticism takes many forms, and is the product 
 of no particular religion. We find it wearing many 
 labels. Buddhism, Fakirism, stoicism, cynicism, monas- 
 ticism, which often do not rightly belong to it. It 
 is one sign of an exhausted vitality which comes at a 
 time when people have ceased to pray to the God of 
 their fathers " Thy kingdom come," but hope to get 
 malicious satisfaction, if not personal profit, from a God 
 who puts down the mighty from their seats, and 
 exalts the humble and meek ; who fills the hungry with 
 good things, and sends the rich empty away, not with
 
 1 66 MAN AT THE 
 
 any reference to their respective merits, or the cause of 
 their condition, but from a capricious delight in turning 
 the tables. In such an age, tragedy, whether contrived 
 by Euripides for the theatre, or by Fate in the Stock 
 Exchange and divorce court, delights the public. Catas- 
 trophes overwhelming the great are hugely pleasing 
 to those who have abandoned the struggle with this 
 world, whether or not they hope to fare any better 
 themselves in another. 
 
 We can only regard the decline of national religions, 
 manifested to-day on the one hand in the extension of 
 scientific agnosticism, and on the other in individualistic 
 superstition, which degrades the deity to the rank of 
 a domestic fetish or an embodiment of class prejudice 
 (even where it falls short of such fantastic manifestations 
 as the Christian science cult), as evidences of decay in 
 the foundations of civilization. 
 
 Closely allied with the religious degradation every- 
 where apparent is the deterioration of the social life. 
 The increase of vice, the disinclination for family 
 responsibilities, the shirking of personal effort, and the 
 determination to repress individuals who would raise the 
 standard of endeavour were free competition allowed, 
 are symptomatic of declining vitality of the stock. The 
 levelling down of industry, the crowding of the rural 
 population into cities, the impatience of direction, the 
 clamour for cheap food, and the general demand that 
 the State shall not only afford its citizens protection in 
 which to attend to their own business, but provide them 
 with free luxuries and amusements, are all indications 
 of decay to be seen throughout the world to-day in 
 much the same forms as they appeared in decadent 
 Rome. The trades-unionism and rural depopulation, 
 the determination not merely to live but to live well
 
 PRESENT DAY 167 
 
 upon the capital of the State, were remarkably similar 
 then to what they are now. In the agrarian laws and 
 the attempts to replace a vanished rural population by 
 settling time-expired legionaries on the land, we see a 
 lost civilization struggling vainly with the problems which 
 confront the world to-day ; and in the legislation of 
 Diocletian, which endeavoured to fix prices, wages, and 
 conditions of labour, we are struck by the familiarity of 
 the disease and of the remedy which only made it worse. 
 
 This personal laziness and cowardice which shirks 
 competition, with a true intuition of its own impaired 
 stamina, tries to find shelter in the * State.' The State, 
 it is argued, limits competition between its members 
 lest, if carried too far, internal competition should render 
 it less able as a whole to compete with other States. 
 Why therefore should not the State abolish competition 
 altogether and ensure the ease and safety of all ? This 
 is not always called ' socialism,' but it is the constant 
 feature in decaying civilization, and is no doubt, in a 
 measure, a throw-back to primitive communism, by 
 that large element in the population complex which 
 would never have attained civilization but for a capacity 
 for discipline gained in association with more vigorous 
 races. ' Socialism ' to the philanthropic reformer means 
 ingenious schemes for regulating the production and 
 distribution of wealth. One cannot but feel sympathy 
 with the aims of such a statesman as Wang Anshih in 
 spite of the disastrous effects of his legislation on China. 
 But what the masses want when they profess themselves 
 socialists is, according to their own explanation, ease 
 without effort, and the abasement of all of whom they 
 are jealous. The ' labour unrest,' which seems to 
 pervade the whole of our civilization, seems incurable. 
 
 The peoples who colonized the New World took their
 
 1 68 MAN AT THE 
 
 civilization with them and have ' kept their phase.' The 
 further development of their civilization has follovi^ed 
 a course continuous v^ith that of Europe from the point 
 at vi^hich it branched off. It has kept on parallel lines, 
 and has solved no problems and produced no novelties 
 that are not accounted for by the under-populated state 
 of a rich territory and the lack of ballast due to escape 
 from traditional restraints. In the United States the 
 population is still so far vi^ithin the capacity of the land 
 that the civilization rattles loose like a pea in a bottle. 
 It is not moulded to the containing shape like a fluid 
 filling a vessel. The undeveloped social organism 
 may indeed be compared to a car without an engine 
 rushing down a steep hill. Contrasted with old-world 
 civilizations which resemble motor cars running by 
 their own power along an undulating road, its progress 
 appears very rapid. But both the pace, and direction 
 depend on the nature of the ground traversed, not on 
 itself. When by increase of population it reaches the 
 bottom of the slope and its impetus is exhausted, it will 
 be faced with the problem of generating its own motive 
 power, and have to consider the question of a goal and 
 the smoothest road by which it can be reached. For 
 the old imported civilization is decaying, here as through- 
 out the world, the land is filling up and a new population, 
 produced by the fusion of many strange elements, will 
 soon have to evolve a new system to meet new conditions. 
 Disintegration threatens the present civilization in the 
 New World as in the Old.^ 
 
 1 Thoughtful Americans have no illusions about the state of their country. 
 Such paragraphs as the following (from the San Francisco Bulletin, April 191 6) 
 appear even in the popular press : 
 
 ARE OUR GREAT MIGRATIONS PAST? 
 
 The United States has had a very long immigration period. The greatest 
 human migration that has ever taken place in the world has been that of
 
 PRESENT DAY 169 
 
 So far I have been dealing with the machinery which 
 human activity has evolved to deal with its environment 
 — in a word, civilization. The suggestion I have offered, 
 that the present civilization appears to be in danger of 
 the same destruction by its own products that has over- 
 taken its predecessors, raises the important question of 
 the biological condition of the species. 
 
 Some years ago Galton expressed his fear that " our 
 race is overweighted " by the civilization it has built 
 up. " The number of the races of mankind that have 
 been entirely destroyed under the pressure of the 
 requirements of an incoming civilization, reads us a 
 terrible lesson. Probably in no former period of the 
 world has the destruction of the races of any animal 
 whatever been effected over such wide areas and with 
 
 Europeans into this country. But the free immigration period, like the free 
 land period, is bound to pass. By law or by natural causes immigration must 
 flow more slowly and evenly. Until this comes about our national life will not 
 be normal. That it has not been normal in the past is shown by the history of 
 our industries — iron, coal, cotton, wool, and silk, to take the great examples. 
 The typical American industry pays comparatively low wages to its unskilled 
 labor ; builds machinery as nearly automatic as it can be made, and is controlled 
 with consummate ability by a very few men at the top. This is not a healthy 
 condition. The labor problem will not begin to be solved until the abilities of 
 the masses of the unskilled, now a drug on the market, are called democrati- 
 cally into productive use. To this end there could be no better tonic than a 
 scarcity of unskilled labor, such as would naturally come from a restriction 
 of immigration. 
 
 Restriction will not be as great a hardship for the immigrant as some of us 
 have feared. This country's day as the unique land of refuge is over. Dr. 
 Jeremiah Jenks, a well-known student of this subject, pointed out recently that 
 Canada and South America are not only climatically well adapted to the 
 northern and southern streams of immigration, but at present offer the 
 immigrant a better economic chance than the United States can. With us 
 economic opportunities are no longer to be had for the asking. Nearly all the 
 natural wealth of the country is now marked "private," and about all the 
 ordinary immigrant can hope for is wages. Fewer and fewer of the new- 
 comers can leap from peanut stand proprietor to department store owner, or 
 from farmhand to landlord. Ours is a hard civilization, even for the robust 
 native. 
 
 On the whole, no measure of preparedness is more urgent than a humanely 
 restrictive immigration bill.
 
 I70 MAN AT THE 
 
 such startling rapidity as in the case of savage man. 
 In the North American continent, in the West Indian 
 islands, in the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, New 
 Zealand and Van Diemen's Land, the human denizens 
 of vast regions have been entirely swept away in the 
 short space of three centuries, less by the pressure of 
 a stronger race than through the influence of a civiliza- 
 tion they were incapable of supporting. And we, too, 
 the foremost labourers in creating this civilization, are 
 beginning to show ourselves incapable of keeping pace 
 with our own work. The needs of centralization, 
 communication and culture, call for more brains and 
 mental stamina than the average of our race possess. 
 We are in crying want for a greater fund of ability in all 
 stations of life ; for neither the classes of statesmen, 
 philosophers, artisans, nor labourers are up to the 
 modern complexity of their several professions. An 
 extended civilization like ours comprises more interests 
 than the ordinary statesmen or philosophers of our 
 present race are capable of dealing with, and it exacts 
 more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans and 
 labourers are capable of performing." No one can deny 
 the truth of this to-day, but it is hard to say whether 
 the vital inadequacy ought to be associated with active 
 deterioration. 
 
 This is a very difficult problem. It is similar to 
 that which confronts a medical man when he is asked 
 whether crime or folly in the conduct of a given in- 
 dividual is to be explained by a weakening of the mind, 
 and if so, whether the mental derangement is due to 
 permanent alteration in the tissues of the brain. It is 
 often hard to say. Here, however, we note certain 
 things. With exuberant multiphcation comes fusion 
 of races, and the best stocks within a population lose
 
 PRESENT DAY 171 
 
 their purity and become merged in the rest. It has been 
 suggested that this accounts for the decline of the 
 ancient Greeks. But this is not all. The physical 
 degeneration which must follow the relaxation of com- 
 petition for life is undeniable and everywhere apparent, 
 and the alarm it is causing appears in talk of imprac- 
 ticable schemes popularly and incorrectly termed 
 * eugenics.' Formerly a decayed civilization had a high 
 death-rate and a low birth-rate, and barbarian invaders 
 eventually killed much of the old stock. Moreover, 
 there were frequent wars. The effect of warfare upon 
 the biological standard of the human race as a whole is 
 by no means simple or obvious. A great country which 
 is constantly engaged in little wars is working for the 
 elimination of the most vital stocks from its population, 
 particularly if its armies are recruited by voluntary 
 enlistment. Even when a nation engages in a war of 
 such magnitude that practically all the males of one 
 generation are subjected to the ordeal of battle, it does 
 not, under modern conditions, promote the survival 
 of the fittest in an individual sense. The weakest 
 soldiers in an army will succumb first to exhaustion and 
 disease ; but exceptional strength, courage, and in- 
 telligence do not give an individual a better chance of 
 escaping projectiles than is shared by the average man. 
 It is the ' fittest ' army which survives. 
 
 To state this principle very simply one may say that 
 the best marksman in an army is as likely to be shot in 
 battle as the worst, and he may as likely as not be killed 
 by the worst, not by the best, marksman on the opposite 
 side. But an army whose average marksmanship is 
 appreciably superior to that of the army against it will, 
 other things being equal, destroy its opponents, and 
 with less loss to itself in proportion as its superiority
 
 172 MAN AT THE 
 
 becomes effective at long range. The army which 
 maintains the highest average in its ranks outmarches, 
 outlasts and outfights the inferior army, and at the 
 end of the struggle contains the largest proportion, if 
 not actual number, of survivors. And among nations 
 it is the nation which can keep on putting the best 
 armies in the field, and at the same time bear the com- 
 plicated strain of war at home, which suffers less in a 
 conflict than rival nations. But until recently this 
 method of selection has been, comparatively speaking, 
 in abeyance, and we cannot be sure what price we have 
 paid for the respite. 
 
 With the opening up of the New World the pre- 
 servation and multiplication of inferior stock has not 
 been interfered with for a considerable time. The 
 first colonization of the new continents drained Western 
 Europe of much of its most vigorous blood, but the 
 general standard in the New World has been lowered 
 later by free admission of the dregs of humanity, both 
 from Europe and the Levant. The opportunity for 
 the segregation of an improved stock was missed. While 
 it can be maintained that, of the white population, the 
 best type in the northern continent is a very fine one, 
 the degeneracy of the lower strata, more particularly in 
 some parts of South America, must be seen to be 
 believed. 
 
 A constant feature of old and decaying civilizations 
 is the way in which the extremely sheltered life allows 
 weak types to flourish, and suppressed elements to 
 reappear in a mixed population. This is seen in one 
 aspect in the debased multitudes which seem actually 
 to thrive in squalid slums of great cities where they 
 defeat every attempt to improve their condition. But 
 besides this there is another aspect. Individuals of
 
 PRESENT DAY 173 
 
 * down-trodden ' races, which are failures as nations in 
 the severe competition of national life, frequently 
 prove most successful as parasites upon the moribund 
 State. They are able to enjoy a civilization they could 
 not have created unless associated with stronger elements, 
 and show in positions of luxury and responsibility the 
 inherent disabilities of their race. The bureaucracy of 
 Imperial Rome was infested with corrupt Greek and 
 Oriental officials, just as Jews and Irish demoralize the 
 political life of the United States to-day. Similarly 
 women, when conditions are hard, shelter their physical 
 weakness behind the complementary strength of men, 
 but as life grows easier and safer for all, they become 
 independent and, entering into competition with men, 
 finally claim political equality with them. When women 
 claim, as in advanced civilization they frequently do, to 
 exercise a voice in the policy of the State, they do so 
 because the equalizing action of civilization has brought 
 the individual requirements of all its slaves down to their 
 level. Life is so easy that they are not at a disadvantage 
 when competing with men. There is only one further 
 stage, which begins in the insubordination of the children. 
 The objection which men have to giving women a 
 voice in the management of the State is rooted in 
 biological rather than in political experience, and is 
 bound up with the fact that the male has to win and 
 woo his mate from rivals. None knew this better than 
 the women, when Deborah, quoting the mother of Sisera 
 and her " wise ladies," takes it for granted that there 
 was always " to every man a damsel or two " when 
 victorious warriors " divided the prey." Man for long 
 ages has been accustomed to see conquerors come into 
 a desirable land, kill the men and take the women. On 
 the one hand, the women found by barbarians when
 
 174 MAN AT THE 
 
 overrunning a decayed civilization have so often overawed 
 their new husbands by their superior knowledge of the 
 arts of peace, that a tradition of the greater refinement 
 of women has been left. On the other hand, the readi- 
 ness that women have shown to become the brides of 
 those who have killed their former husbands and chil- 
 dren has made men regard them as possessions rather 
 than members of the State. Women are so frequently 
 transferred from man to man and tribe to tribe, by 
 marriage, sale and capture, and their attitude towards 
 life is so different from that of their husbands, that 
 men are not sufficiently sure that they are identified 
 with the State and interested in its continuity, to risk 
 consulting them in matters concerning its safety. 
 
 Even in recent times civilized and cultured women 
 have, after a heroic resistance while hope yet remained, 
 shown the same acquiescence on occasions of national 
 disaster. The gentle Euripides, whose writings provide 
 so much ammunition for feminist orators, sadly admits 
 this, and he had seen the women of his own race in the 
 slave-market after an Athenian triumph over another 
 Greek city. The lachrymose philosophy with which 
 the " Trojan women " accept their fate makes this 
 terrible play a document of the greatest anthropological 
 interest. 
 
 In the literature of various races the subject is 
 usually found to be one fraught with difficulty. On 
 the one hand, we find Andromache, one of the noblest 
 and most sympathetic of tragic figures, consoled for the 
 loss of Hector and Astyanax by a renewal of happy 
 married life with one of their Greek murderers. On the 
 other, we find the Japanese lady, Tokiwa, surrendering 
 to the murderer of her lord in order that he may 
 spare the lives of her sons, who grew up to avenge their
 
 PRESENT DAY 175 
 
 father. We can observe the same throughout history. 
 Great conquerors with constructive aims usually try 
 to consolidate their conquests and assimilate the culture 
 of their recently acquired possessions by marrying, and 
 encouraging their followers to marry, the heiresses of 
 their new dominions. Alexander favoured Persian 
 princesses as the brides most expedient for his generals 
 and himself. William the Conqueror chose wives for 
 his Normans from the remnants of the Saxon aristocracy. 
 Akbar's matrimonial supervision aimed at alliances 
 between Rajput princesses and his Mohammedan 
 followers. And so on. The principle is unchanged 
 to-day. The parvenu looks to consolidate his position 
 by a brilliant marriage, and the traditional reward which 
 popular fiction bestows on the industrious apprentice 
 is a partnership and marriage with his employer's 
 daughter. The conquerors find the women com- 
 plaisant, to the disgust of such of their men as survive 
 to see the change ; and so long as the men of a race 
 retain their power they look upon women, not as their 
 partners in the State, but as possessions to be guarded. 
 
 The conditions prevailing in the present stage of 
 civilization are undoubtedly different from those of 
 any preceding one. Civilization is now practically 
 world wide, and its mastery of the whole human race is 
 so complete that all are slaves to it alike. Only in 
 tropical forests and Asiatic backwaters of civilization 
 does personal-slavery persist, so that everywhere the 
 victims of civilization boast that they are ' free.' The 
 levelling process can hardly stop here, and just as all 
 men have come into the system, all women wish to enter 
 it on the same footing. But the unrest of women, of 
 which we hear everywhere, from the streets of London 
 to the harems of Constantinople, recalls unpleasant
 
 176 MAN AT THE 
 
 symptoms in the decay of previous great civilizations. 
 We can hardly observe that the women have got out of 
 hand without recognizing a deterioration in the men, 
 and fearing that attempts arc being made to overbuild 
 the structure of society upon a crumbling foundation. 
 
 It will be seen that the whole world to-day is in a 
 condition which has often been observed before on a 
 smaller scale within the limits of an old civilization. 
 Society is built up upon the old tribal instinct. The 
 community is competing against nature, and each of 
 its members must show forbearance towards his neigh- 
 bours, help those who need it, co-operate fairly with 
 the rest for their common good, and evade no sacrifice 
 or seize no advantage by which he profits to the detri- 
 ment of others. In other words, the struggle for exist- 
 ence must be suppressed within the community in order 
 that the community as a whole may compete successfully 
 with external nature. When the tribe has been replaced 
 by the great nation, the struggle for existence against 
 nature without is carried on upon frontiers so distant 
 from its centre that the need for suppressing the struggle 
 for existence between its own members at home is 
 lost sight of. This, together with the deterioration 
 of the population which is bred in such security leads 
 to disintegration through internal strife. A stage was 
 recently reached in the history of the human species 
 when conditions throughout the whole world were very 
 like those in the heart of a great empire. Until the 
 outbreak of the present war there was no enemy apparent 
 against which men need combine, and there seemed no 
 reason to curb individual selfishness. 
 
 In recent years it began to be suspected that the 
 peace of the world could not be an enduring one. 
 Efforts were made to fix the peace by contriving courts
 
 PRESENT DAY 177 
 
 of arbitration and binding nations in treaties not to 
 break the peace. Rules for civilized warfare were drawn 
 up so that if the breach of the peace could not be pre- 
 vented by one treaty, the form the disturbance should 
 take should be fixed by another. These arrangements 
 overlooked two biological facts. Firstly, the law can 
 only limit the struggle for existence within a com- 
 munity whose resources are sufficient for the needs of 
 its members. Secondly, disputants can only be con- 
 trolled by the presence of a sufficient number of people 
 who are averse to letting them brawl. Of late the 
 relation of the resources of the world to its human 
 population has been such that the struggle for existence 
 (existence in sufficient comfort to be thought worth 
 while, for bankruptcy can rarely be put off until the 
 bankrupt can offer nothing in the pound) had to begin 
 again. The nations of the world in their different 
 ways prepared for the struggle and now it has begun. 
 Since almost all the Great Powers are involved, the world 
 resembles a law court in which everyone is a litigant, 
 and there are no judge, jury, or police to administer the 
 law. The consequence is that treaties, being only 
 observed by those whose interest it is to observe them, 
 are disregarded, and the struggle is proceeding in accord- 
 ance with the biological principle that self-preservation 
 is the first consideration. There is, of course, nothing 
 new in all this. The advertisement of cheap and 
 painless substitutes for war has been a recurring feature 
 in the cycles of civilization. In Greece of the fifth 
 century B.C. there prevailed a belief that in treaties 
 and arbitration had been found a panacea for inter- 
 national troubles. It showed a frame of mind which 
 closely resembled the optimism of recent times, and 
 suffered the same tragic disillusionment. 
 12
 
 178 MAN AT THE 
 
 The outcome no one can foresee. The great question 
 is whether this civiUzation will be regenerated or de- 
 stroyed. There have been times when a civilization 
 which appeared to be far gone in decay has been restored 
 to temporary health by a struggle with external danger : 
 individualistic strife has ceased, selfish politicians have 
 combined to place their country above faction, the 
 people have entrusted the organization of their resources 
 unreservedly to the men they believed most able, 
 and all have looked beyond their domestic fetishes to 
 the God of their fathers. But this is not invariably 
 the effect of external danger. If the rottenness of the 
 structure has gone too far the touch from without only 
 brings it down with a crash. 
 
 No one expects to see this civilization suddenly 
 overwhelmed by a cataclysm. It will be not one war 
 which will wear it out. The first effect of the increased 
 tension may be to raise standards. Victory, bringing 
 independence and mastery, will be to the nations with 
 the greatest self-control and intelligence, and for a time 
 we may see the irresponsibility of selfish cosmopolitanism 
 replaced by patriotism. But even then it is difficult 
 to see how the present civilization can continue. Civiliza- 
 tion is so uniform. The speech of a well-known man 
 delivered in London to-day is published in the news- 
 papers of Valparaiso, Calcutta and Yokohama to-morrow ; 
 and opinions regarding it are exchanged between all 
 three cities within the week. A man in each of these 
 cities may have toothache and have the tooth stopped 
 in practically the same way. Clothes worn by natives 
 in Africa were grown in America and manufactured in 
 Europe. Diseases are treated in China, and railways 
 worked in South America, by men trained in the same 
 university. Yet when one finds natives in the interior
 
 PRESENT DAY 179 
 
 of Africa and South America far from the nearest 
 telegraph or railway using guns and sewing machines, 
 enjoying gramophones and sparklets, boasting of Bibles 
 in the vernacular, and parading ' up-to-date ' democratic 
 catchwords, one cannot help seeing that all these things 
 which have altered their lives have been exported to 
 them from a few places in Europe and North America. 
 A large proportion of the human race participates in a 
 civilization which it has received ready-made and which 
 only adds to its complexity and instability. Much that 
 is characteristic of our civilization has grown solely out 
 of the period of wealth and peace, and, like the popula- 
 tion so rankly multiplied in that easy time, is little able 
 to bear an increasing strain should the pressure of life 
 rise. Already in art, science, and literature we see a 
 weakness, an inclination to apply, adapt, and copy rather 
 than to originate, a tendency to avoid rather than to 
 overcome the difficulties of technique, and to hide 
 uncertainty of mind behind obscurity of language 
 whilst professing to believe that precision of ideas and 
 clearness of exposition suggest want of depth. 
 
 Reflecting on the fate of previous civilizations, we 
 may well wonder which, if any, of the achievements of 
 our own will survive it. It is quite possible that at 
 some future period, when another civilization is being 
 built upon the ruins of the present, the arts of photo- 
 graphy and flying may have to be reinvented, and the 
 forces of steam and electricity rediscovered. 
 
 Painfully acquired knowledge is very liable to be 
 lost even without the aid of a destructive visitation of 
 ' Huns.' 
 
 Every year now sees the republication of facts or 
 the restatement of theories by individuals who believe, 
 in perfect good faith, that they are announcing new
 
 i8o MAN AT THE PRESENT DAY 
 
 discoveries. Indeed a medical teacher has said that 
 young physicians would avoid repeating many old 
 mistakes if only they acquainted themselves with the 
 work already done by the ancients. The teacher who 
 said this was Hippocrates, and he said it roughly two 
 thousand four hundred years ago. He belonged to a 
 former civilization, but we recognize the same conditions 
 in our own. 
 
 When we reflect that our age is so overloaded by its 
 accumulations of knowledge that even with a highly 
 perfected system of co-ordination and indexing, and in 
 the hands of men bred in its atmosphere and trained to 
 its application, our wisdom is more than we can assimilate 
 or use, we may well be doubtful how much could be 
 brought to the surface again if its complex fabric were 
 even for a moment submerged. 
 
 No one can say whether our decline is to extend 
 through decades or centuries. It is even doubtful 
 whether we have yet reached the full height we are 
 destined to attain. But there seems no reason for 
 claiming greater permanence for the present civiliza- 
 tion, in spite of its world-wide achievements, than has 
 been shown by any of the great civilizations of the 
 past.
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 June 1 91 6. 
 
 WE have become accustomed to hearing the 
 events of the past twenty months described 
 as " the greatest war in history," and to 
 finding them regarded as of unique and overwhelming 
 importance in determining the destiny of the human 
 race. In a chapter dealing with the condition of man 
 at the present day, the European War may seem to 
 require more than passing mention. If I have touched 
 upon it but lightly, it is not because I underrate its 
 terrible importance to ourselves. But for the purposes 
 of this book I can only discuss the war from two points 
 of view. Is it an event unique in the history of man- 
 kind ? Will it produce results unprecedented in the 
 experience of the human race ? Personally I cannot 
 make any other reply to either of these questions than 
 that I do not know. 
 
 Is this " the greatest war in history," as many 
 people seem to take for granted ? I do not see how 
 we can judge except by results. We usually expect 
 results to be proportionate to the forces at work, to the 
 duration of the period through which they are acting, 
 and to the area over which their influence is exerted. 
 If we take a former war as a standard of comparison, we 
 shall see the difficulty of attempting to estimate the 
 changes which are likely to result from the present 
 struggle. At the beginning of the thirteenth century
 
 1 82 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 the Mongols, moved like certain nations of to-day by 
 an irresistible need for expansion, started upon a career 
 of devastation under the leadership of Jenghis Khan. 
 One of the cities they took was Kaifong in China. This 
 city, which stood a siege of twelve months, was defended 
 by walls thirty-six miles in circumference, and its 
 population was estimated at seven millions. At the 
 other end of Asia, Herat was taken by storm after a 
 siege of six months, and in the course of a week i ,600,000 
 people were massacred within the walls. Mohammed, 
 the Shah of Khwarizm, led an army of 400,000 men 
 against one of the two armies which Jenghis Khan sent 
 simultaneously against his empire. He was defeated 
 and left 160,000 dead on the field. These random 
 specimens are big figures even according to present-day 
 standards. Jenghis once said, " My country is a magazine 
 of warriors " ; and it must needs have been, for Mongol 
 armies were fighting and conquering on a grand scale 
 from Poland to the eastern limits of China through a 
 period of more than half a century. The fury of Mongols 
 to some extent spent itself under the leadership of 
 Jenghis Khan and his successors, Oghatai and Kublai 
 Khan. But even then Asia and Eastern Europe had no 
 peace until after Timur had done his worst. So that 
 the Mongol upheaval may be said to have started a 
 period of war, in which large forces were engaged, over 
 the whole of Asia and part of Europe for nearly two 
 centuries. Among its results were the foundation of 
 the Yuen dynasty in China and more remotely of the 
 Mogul dynasty in India, the overthrow of the Eastern 
 Caliphate, the devastation of Russia, and indirectly 
 the fall of the Byzantine Empire, since the Turks being 
 driven westward came to found eventually the Turkish 
 empire in Europe.
 
 POSTSCRIPT 183 
 
 How far do the sequence of cause and effect in this 
 instance help us to estimate the magnitude of present 
 happenings and to anticipate their results ? To take 
 the question of numbers first, it may be objected that 
 in Asiatic wars figures are unreliable. This may be 
 true. But though we know that the armies engaged in 
 the present war are very great, neither the numbers in 
 the field nor the extent of the casualties are known 
 accurately, and they are in some quarters not only 
 deliberately concealed but falsified by those who could 
 speak with authority. It is too early to discuss the 
 question of time. This war may be destined to last 
 for fifty years, but it has not lasted for three years 
 yet. We have not, so far as I know, any grounds for 
 saying that the European armies can do as much damage 
 in two years as the Tartars in fifty, or even in five. While 
 as to area, apart from the German colonies, the areas 
 made desolate by the fighting in Belgium, France, 
 Poland and Servia cannot compare either in population 
 or extent with those ravaged by the Mongols in China 
 alone. Though the results of the Mongol upheaval 
 may be trifling compared with those to whose threshold 
 the present war has brought us, we cannot judge yet 
 what is in store for us sufficiently to be quite sure that 
 this will prove to be the case. We hear much of im- 
 minent changes, social, economic, dynastic and political, 
 but so far they have not been accomplished, and in the 
 present confusion we cannot distinguish durable innova- 
 tions from emergency measures. The only dynastic 
 change effected as yet has been the substitution of a 
 Sultan for the Khedive of Egypt. And though we 
 express pious hopes that this time the Turks will be 
 compelled to migrate out of Europe, they are not on 
 the way at the time of writing.
 
 1 84 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 This may be " the greatest war in history." It 
 seems very probable that such large armies have never 
 been engaged nor such extensive destruction of life and 
 property achieved within the space of two years before. 
 But surely grandiose comparisons are premature. Our 
 sufferings are sufficient, and are not to be alleviated by 
 calling them " the most terrible the world has ever 
 seen." 
 
 It would be interesting to know what historians 
 will be thinking two hundred years hence ; but I do 
 not see how anyone to-day can anticipate their judg- 
 ment. We do not expect this war to last more than 
 another year or two ; and we hope it may be ended 
 even sooner. We look, moreover, for a decision which 
 will render the Teutonic Powers innocuous for a long 
 time to come. But the forces were accumulating and 
 tension growing throughout the world for some time 
 before the storm burst, and it is most unlikely that the 
 readjustment will be completed and an equilibrium 
 reached at the moment when hostilities cease. It is 
 not possible for us to say whether the war is an episode 
 disturbing the even course of events, or the first step 
 to a new state of things, or a restoration of older condi- 
 tions of existence more like those which prevailed before 
 the discovery of America.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IN the preceding pages an attempt has been 
 made to trace the history of man. In such an 
 attempt it is perhaps inevitable that dispropor- 
 tionate attention should be given to the most recent 
 times in which we ourselves live, since they are the 
 times of which we know most, and with which we are 
 most concerned. Yet it is surely a mistake to regard 
 all that has happened during more than two hundred 
 thousand years as of less importance than the events 
 of the last two thousand or even ten thousand years. 
 A brief resume may make this more apparent. 
 
 Out of the ground-living or human group of animals 
 which diverged from the arboreal or anthropoid apes, 
 two species ultimately survived the rest. These were 
 two species of man, the Neanderthal and the so- 
 called ' modern ' species. Both had brains as large as 
 the average European of to-day and larger than some 
 modern savage races. Both were ' human ' in their 
 ways of living. 
 
 After long ages the more massive Neanderthal 
 species became extinct : why, we do not know. 
 
 Advancing along parallel lines the ' modern ' species 
 evolved several races. Some of these have survived 
 to the present day; others, inferior in no way that we 
 can discover, have died out : why, we do not know. 
 
 Even before the last ice age, when the Neanderthal 
 
 species was still living side by side with the ' modern ' 
 
 185
 
 1 86 CONCLUSION 
 
 species, the products of human ingenuity witnessed to 
 intelligence, artistic taste, and manual dexterity in no 
 way inferior to those of modern races. Certain races 
 developed a high culture, though owing to the different 
 needs of the conditions under which they lived they 
 evolved nothing like the civilization of to-day. These 
 races disappeared, leaving no descendants ; and their 
 culture was lost, not handed on, only to be rediscovered 
 after the passage of anything from fifty to a hundred 
 thousand years. Once more, why they vanished and 
 their culture was lost we do not know. 
 
 After the last ice age other races, which cannot as 
 yet be traced back to their origins, multiplied till they 
 filled the habitable world. These survivors evolved a 
 new culture different from that of the races just 
 mentioned. After tens of thousands of years these races 
 comparatively suddenly produced civilization. Civiliza- 
 tion arose from the interaction of different types of 
 men reacting on one another in dense numbers on land 
 which was inadequate to support them unless they were 
 highly organized to develop its resources by works of 
 broad design carried out on a large scale. 
 
 This new mode of life began amongst the human 
 population in several localities around the world roughly 
 ten to twelve thousand years ago. During the time 
 which has since elapsed a succession of systems, civiliza- 
 tions, have arisen, matured, declined and been destroyed. 
 But though individually they have fallen the mode of 
 life has spread, and many of the achievements of dead 
 civilizations have survived them to enrich their suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 The system of life, civilization, has been spread, 
 largely through the great breeding grounds of the world 
 pouring out a succession of swarms, with fresh vitality,
 
 CONCLUSION 187 
 
 to restart civilizations, on wider and wider bases, as 
 their builders degenerated in the conditions which their 
 labours produced. 
 
 For several thousand years the rise and fall of civiliza- 
 tions was local, and man, whilst increasing the supporting 
 capacity of the land he occupied, nevertheless grew 
 against pressure. All this while the struggle for exist- 
 ence went on, men being organized for mutual support, 
 so that the units were large communities, nations, not 
 individuals. 
 
 Within the last thousand years the Old- World civiliza- 
 tions opened up the remaining continents of the globe, 
 and the additional space and wealth thus acquired, 
 relieved the pressure of life and relaxed the struggle for 
 existence. In the period of peace and plenty which 
 followed, the methods of dealing with the material 
 resources of the world were vastly improved, and civiliza- 
 tion throughout the world became comparativelyuniform 
 and continuous. 
 
 At last the population of the world, with a very high 
 standard of living, is catching up with the resources of 
 the globe, and the resumption of the struggle for 
 existence is inevitable. At the same time the whole char- 
 acter of the population is greatly deteriorated through 
 the unweeded multiplication of even the most defective 
 stock. The world-wide civilization of to-day shows 
 all those signs of decay which have heralded the decline 
 of great local civilizations in the past. Meanwhile 
 the chief breeding grounds of the world are 
 becoming exhausted owing to periodic emigrations of 
 their most vigorous stock through many centuries ; 
 and are further deteriorated by the introduction of the 
 very conditions of civilization which the nomadic 
 and pastoral peoples they have sent out have found
 
 1 88 CONCLUSION 
 
 fatal to their vitality elsewhere. Whet^ier the present 
 civilization will decay and break up, and out of the ruins 
 new civilizations will arise in localities where conditions 
 produce new stocks with fresh vitality, or whether the 
 civilization of the last ten thousand years is only an 
 episode in human history inherently evanescent and now 
 passing away, is a problem upon which it is vain to 
 speculate. 
 
 The ultimate extinction of man is, of course, as 
 inevitable as was that of the innumerable species with 
 whose remains the geological strata are packed ; but 
 this again is a subject about which it is profitless to 
 speculate. 
 
 During his long occupancy of the earth, man has 
 experienced and survived great changes in the earth's 
 surface and climate. A great ice age has come and 
 gone, leaving him, thanks to his versatility, hardly 
 changed. He has seen types of animals become extinct 
 and new forms arise. He has adapted himself, not by 
 physical modification but by mental versatility and 
 manual dexterity, to the reshaping of continents. But 
 the mushroom growth of civilization has been exposed 
 to no trials of a magnitude in any way corresponding to 
 those through which man as a species has managed 
 to endure. Who dare say that this brief phase may 
 not pass and man remain after civilization has gone ? 
 Civilization may not even last until a slow geological 
 catastrophe submerges it. Man is himself altering the 
 surface of the globe with great rapidity. He seems 
 bent on making a clean sweep of all the larger animals, 
 his mining and industrial activities are beginning to 
 affect chemistry over wide areas of the earth, and 
 his reckless destruction of forests is so disturbing the 
 rainfall that deserts are appearing which spread like
 
 CONCLUSION 189 
 
 rodent ulcers as the dust raised from them by the wind 
 chokes the surrounding vegetation. Appreciable inter- 
 ference with the course of nature one can see, but the 
 ultimate effect none can foretell. 
 
 And on this note we must close with what content 
 we may : a note not of pessimism but of agnosticism. 
 We know little of man's origin. He comes out of dim 
 mists of uncertainty. The whole course of his exist- 
 ence up to to-day presents a long series of problems 
 before which we stand baffled. And of his final destiny 
 we dare not even guess.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Agnosticism, 163-4, 166. 
 
 ' Alpine race,' the, 41, 58, 79. 
 
 Animals, the use of, 31, 32-4, 61. 
 
 Anthropoid group, the, 17-9. 
 
 Apes, the, 15-9, 21, 32. 
 
 Arab hordes, 125-6. 
 
 Aristocracy, 89, 93-6, 145-8, 153-4. 
 
 Art, the decay of, 179. 
 
 — the rise and decay of, 51-5. 
 Ascendancy, the, of man, 83. 
 Asceticism, 165. 
 Athenagoras, 156-7. 
 
 Baboons, the, 16-7, 34. 
 Becker, Dr., 126. 
 
 Chimpanzee, the, 17-8, 28-30. 
 Civilization and slavery, 90-7. 
 
 — conditions of, 85-8, 104-6, 144-5. 
 
 — defined, 3, 84. 
 
 — depends on individuals, 149-50. 
 
 — intermittent, 4, 123-7. 
 
 — late appearance of, 3, 85, 107, 114. 
 
 — maintained by fear, 155-6. 
 
 — methods of, 104-5, Ii6. 
 
 — periodicity of, 124-7. 
 
 — physical deterioration in, 72, 127-8. 
 
 — primary foci of, 103-4. 
 
 — recurrent failure of, 161. 
 Civilization, modern, conditions of, 
 
 132-3- 
 
 — decay of, 159, 169-76. 
 
 — foundation of, 115. 
 
 — in the New World, 167-9. 
 
 — origins of, 135. 
 
 — peculiarities of, 140-3. 
 
 — uniformity of, 178-9. 
 Civilizations, ancient, in Europe, 101-2. 
 
 — climax of, the, 100- 1, 12 1-3. 
 
 — decay of, the, loo-i, 114, 127-9. 
 
 — modes of spread of, 110-4. 
 
 — perfection of, ancient, the, 117-20. 
 
 — uniformity of, the, 1 16, 122, 140-3. 
 Climbers, types of, 13-6. 
 'Combines,' 153. 
 
 Competition, human, 59-61. 
 
 Crawley, Richard, 116. 
 
 Crete, its ancient civilization, 1 18-9. 
 
 Cro-Magnon race, the, 40, 41, 50, 55-6. 
 
 — culture of the, 50-2, 54, 59, 84-5. 
 Culture of extinct races, 2. 
 
 Darwin, 76. 
 
 Democracy, corruptness of, 147-52. 
 
 — failure of, 146-55. 
 
 — initial success of, 147-8. 
 
 — spread of, 147, 159-60. 
 Democratic rulers, the fate of, 155. 
 Discipline, 66-72. 
 
 Division of labour, the, 64-6. 
 
 Education, effects of, 5. 
 
 — in Athens, 142. 
 
 — in Babylon, 118. 
 Environment, effects of, 5, 8-1 1. 
 
 — man modifies his, 83. 
 
 Free populations, 92, 96. 
 
 Gait, erect, 14, 15, 28, 30-1. 
 
 Galton, 169. 
 
 Gibbons, the, 15-8, 21-2, 34. 
 
 Goddard, 78. 
 
 Gorilla, the, 17, 18, 34. 
 
 Government, 67-8. 
 
 — by suffrage, 150. 
 
 — popular, 154-5. 
 Great men, 149-50. 
 
 Grimaldi race, the, 40-1, 50( 54. 
 
 Hand, the, 23, 26-8. 
 
 Hawes, Mr. and Mrs., 119. 
 
 Heredity, 5. 
 
 Hogarth, 125. 
 
 Horse, specialization of the, 12, 24. 
 
 Ice age, the last, 2, 40-1, 47. 
 
 Inca Rocca, 129. 
 
 Individualism, modern, 144, 166. 
 
 — of the anthropoids, 34. 
 
 — of the primates, 62-3. 
 
 — restraint of, 66, 70. 
 Insectivora, 13. 
 
 Intelligence of the primates, the, 25-30. 
 Interbreeding among primates, 41. 
 Invention, modern, 132, 135, 140-2.
 
 192 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jastrow, Professor, 88. I 
 
 Joyce, 88. 
 
 Justice, evolution of, 71-2. 
 
 Keith, Professor, 37, 40. 
 
 Leadership, 66-7, 89, 150. 
 Lemur group, the, 13-4. 
 Lemurs, the, 13, 14, 26-7, 34. 
 Limbs of primates, the, 12. 
 Literature, the decay of, 179. 
 
 Mammal, primitive type of, 1 1-2. 
 Man (charts), 16, 18, 19. 
 
 — antiquity of, 3, 13, 15, 36-7. 
 
 — early, history of, 46-7. 
 
 — extinct, species of, 2, 43-50. 
 
 — extinct types of, 20,37, 40, 44, 50, 58. 
 
 — his predatory instinct, 14S-6. 
 
 — physical characters of, 1 1-2, 20-4, 
 
 30-1. 
 
 — secondary sexual characters ot, 21-3. 
 
 — survival of, lo-i, 30-7. 
 
 Man, modern, antiquity of, 2, 37-42. 
 
 — early history of, 48-55, 58-61. 
 
 — extinct types of, 40. 
 
 — local adaptation of, 73-7- 
 
 — mental characters of, 8, 19, 23, 30-6. 
 
 — physical characters of, 4, 7-8, 30-1. 
 
 — spread of, 73-4. 
 
 — survival of, 58-66. 
 
 — three main divisions of, 37-9> 4l~2. 
 
 — versatility of, 4-5, 36, 63-5. 
 
 Man, the Neanderthal, type of, 20-1, 
 
 22-3, 41, 43-50. 
 'Mediterranean race,' the, 41, 58. 
 Military adventurers, 149, 153, 157-8- 
 
 — despotism, 158-9. 
 Monarchy, 145, 146. 
 Monkey group, the, 13-6. 
 Monkeys, 13-8, 25-6, 27, 34. 
 Murray, Professor, 120. 
 
 Mutual help, principle of, 17, 16, 72. 
 Myers, 88. 
 
 New World, discovery of the, 131-31 
 
 135-6. . 
 Nonconformity, 163. 
 'Northern race,' the, 4I, 58. 
 
 Oligarchy, political, 152. 
 
 Orang, 18. 
 
 Over-population of Old World, 137-8. 
 
 Pacificism, 176-7. 
 Patriotism, 68, 91, 99-100. 
 Petrie, Professor, 124. 
 
 Political history, 144-59. 
 
 — rivalries, 156. 
 Polymorphism of man, 75. 
 
 — of dogs, 76-7. 
 Printing, 142. 
 Progress and decay, 143. 
 
 Races, intercourse between, 77-8i, m. 
 
 — ' modern,' mixture of, 75-6, 99. 
 
 — segregation of, 75-7j 80-1. 
 
 — stability of, 77. 
 Religion, national, 73. 
 decay of, 163-5. 
 
 — necessary to civilization, 161-3. 
 Religions, durability of, 164-5. 
 Rousseau, 148. 
 
 Schliemann, Dr., lOi. 
 
 Science, modern, sources of, 135. 
 
 — decay of, 179-80. 
 
 Sexes, the characters of, 21-3, 46. 
 Slav race, the, 138-9. 
 Slavery, 89-97. 
 
 — in the New World, 97, 137. 
 Social life, deterioration of, 166-7. 
 
 — uniformity of, 1 1 7-20. 
 
 Social systems, 31, 34-5, 59, 67-73. 
 
 — virtues, 62-3, 68-70, 72. 
 Socialism, 167. 
 
 State, internal enemies of the, 153. 
 Stock, inferior, survival of, 172-3. 
 ' Struggle for existence,' the, 8-1 1, 49. 
 
 — between communities, 62-3, 66-70. 
 
 — in civilization, 91, 99-100, 136, 176. 
 Suffrage, universal, 150. 
 
 Tail, the, 12, 14-6, 28. 
 Teeth, the, 10, 12, 14, 15, 46. 
 ' Teutonic race,' the, 138-9. 
 Thucydides, 156. 
 Toleration in conquerors, 120- 1. 
 Trade, 78, 80, 99, 137. 
 Trade routes, no, 135. 
 
 Vision, binocular, of primates, 23. 
 
 War, a biological event, 133-5. 
 
 — biological result of, 1 7 1-2. 
 
 — the present, 137-40, 159-60, 177-8. 
 magnitude ot. 181-4. 
 
 — uniformity of art of, 116-7, 140-I, 
 Woman, characters of, 21-3. 
 
 — citizenship of, 1 73-5. 
 
 — her competition with man, 173-6. 
 
 — in Babylon, 118. 
 
 — tribal, 65. 
 
 Frintcd by Morkjson & Gibb Limitld, Edinburgh
 
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