into a second stage of stagnation. The conflict was at an end, he was
the victor in the fight, he could rest upon his laurels and take life
easy. In addition to his mechanical gains, man had advanced much in
social and political relations, and continued to advance until his
primitive form of organization was perfected. At the end of it all we
find him existing under two conditions, depending upon differences in
the character of the country in which he lived.
In the steppes and deserts of Asia and the deserts of Africa he was a
nomad herdsman, his life being spent in the care of his flocks and
herds, his political organization the patriarchal, his possessions few,
his needs small, his mind at rest, his progress largely at an end. Thus
he still lives, and this organization and mode of life still persist,
little affected by the long centuries that have passed and not greatly
modified by the many wars in which he has been engaged. Mentally, the
man of the steppe and the desert is to-day little advanced beyond his
predecessors of thousands of years ago.
In the more fertile regions of the earth man had become an
agriculturist, each clan holding its section of the earth as common
property. A different though primitive form of political organization
arose here, that of the village community, in which there was no
distinction of rich and poor, all men were equal in rights and
privileges, all were content with their situation, and the mental
condition was largely that of stagnation. This political condition we
find to have been widespread over the earth, alike in the eastern and
western hemispheres, as the one into which all developing agricultural
communities emerged, and in which they persisted unchanged until forced
to adopt new relations through a new influence still to be described. As
the patriarchal clan is persistent on the Asiatic steppes and deserts,
so is the village community on the Russian plains and among the Aryans
of Hindostan. It has been generally overcome in other localities, but it
was broadly extended until within comparatively recent times, and traces
of it may still be found in many parts of the earth.
The political organization of these primitive communities of herders and
farmers was of the simplest. Over the herding clan a patriarchal chief
presided, his authority based on his position as representative of the
ancestor of the community. The head man of the agricultural clan was
elected by the free choice of his fellows, his equals in rank and
station. But the supposed most direct descendant from the clan ancestor
was apt to be chosen. In both cases the political organization was of
the family type, being but an extension of family government, and the
widely prevailing system of ancestor worship had much to do with the
reverence in which the chief was held and the authority which he
exercised.
The development of this phase of human progress did not stop here.
Kingdoms and empires arose as direct resultants of this condition of
affairs. In some localities, such as Egypt and Babylonia, the great
fertility of the soil in the time gave rise to a dense population,
largely gathered in towns and villages, where industries other than
agriculture developed and closer social relations existed. The simple
organization of the village or the clan was not sufficient for such a
population, and a more intricate governmental system arose; but it seems
to have been simply an extension of the older system of chieftainship,
based on the family or paternal relation, and on the growth of religious
influence and priestly control. It seems, in fact, to have been through
the influence of religious ideas that men first rose to power and became
supreme over their fellows.
We have no concern here with the development of religious systems,
other than to say that in the primitive agricultural community a
succession of ideas of man's relation to the unseen arose, yielding, in
addition to the widespread ancestor worship, a system of shamanism, or
belief in the presence and power of malignant spirits, and one of
fetichism, which developed into mythology, or worship of the great
powers of nature. What we are concerned in is the fact that from these
religious conceptions a priesthood everywhere arose, beginning in the
simple conjurer or the healer by spells and incantations, and developing
into a priestly establishment whose leading members had a vigorous
control over the people through their beliefs, fears, and superstitions.
This priestly system was the basis of the first imperial organization.
Kingly authority was not gained at first through power over men's
bodies, but through influence over their minds. There is much reason to
believe that the chief of the clan or tribe, who led in its public
worship and was looked upon as the representative of its divine
ancestor, retained the influence thence arising as the tribe developed
into the nation, adding the power and position of the high priest to
that of the tribal chief.
There is abundant evidence that in this simple and direct manner the
imperial organization everywhere grew out of the primitive village and
patriarchal systems. In the early days of Egypt, before its era of
conquest began, the Pharaoh was the high priest of the nation, weak in
temporal, strong in spiritual power; and the political organization in
general probably grew out of the sacerdotal establishment. Very likely
the Babylonian kingdom was organized in the same manner, though wars and
changes of dynasty have obscured its early state. In China the patriarch
of a nomad horde became emperor of a nation retaining ancestor worship
as its chief religious system. He held, and still holds, the position of
father of his people, the representative of the original ancestor, and
high priest of the nation.
In India the priestly establishment was differently organized. It was a
democracy instead of an aristocracy. There was no high priest to seize
the reins of government. As a result, no empire arose in India. A simple
outgrowth of the tribal system developed, each tribe under its chief,
while the priesthood as a whole remained the real rulers of the people.
If we come to America, we discover a similar condition of affairs, the
head of the religious establishment becoming everywhere the head of the
nation. This was the case in Mexico, where the Montezuma was high
priest, and derived his power largely from this position. It was the
case in Peru, where the Inca was the direct representative on earth of
the solar deity. It was the case with the agricultural communities of
the southern United States, whose Mico was at once high priest and
autocrat. It was doubtless the case with the Mound Builders, of whom
these communities were probably the descendants.
Such seems to have been the final outcome of the contest with nature,
where permitted to develop in its natural and unobstructed way. A series
of empires of a simple type of organization arose, their rulers uniting
temporal and spiritual power, and becoming autocrats in a double sense,
supreme lords of body and soul. It was in its nature a persistent type.
Once reached, it tended to continue indefinitely, stagnation following
the era of growth. But war and invasion have broken it up everywhere
except in China, a country largely defended by nature against invasion
and inhabited by an innately peaceful people. As the forest Pygmy group
represents to-day the completion of the first stage of human evolution,
so the patriarchal empire of China represents that of the second.
Stagnation there long since succeeded development. For several thousand
years China has almost stood still. It comes down to us as the
fossilized representative of an antique system, physically active but
mentally inert, its organization rigidly fixed, and not to be disturbed
unless the empire itself is rent to pieces.
XI
WARFARE AND CIVILIZATION
Long before the second phase of the evolution of man had been completed
the third phase had begun, that of the conflict of man with man. The
animal kingdom once subdued, and nature made man's friend and servant,
the human race increased and multiplied until the borders of communities
met and hostile relations arose between them. A fight for place began, a
struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and
for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which
the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring,
and aggressive rose to power and control.
It was the final act in the great drama of "natural selection," which
had been played upon the stage of the earth since the first appearance
of living forms; the last and most ruthless of them all, for the
instigating cause was no longer merely the pressure for a share of the
food supply, but to this was added the lust for power and place, the
hunger for wealth and dominion, the insatiable appetite for autocratic
control. Millions upon millions of men were swept away by the sword,
and by its attendant demons, famine and pestilence; and still the
stronger and abler climbed to the top, the weaker and inferior
succumbed; and the intellectual evolution of man went on with enhanced
rapidity as the harvest of the sword was gathered in, and the merciless
reapers of men swept in successive columns over the earth, each a stage
higher in mental ability than the preceding.
This phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history.
Before its advent man had no history. It would be as useful to attempt
to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his
progress. History is the record of individuality, and in primitive times
equality and communism prevailed, and the individual had not yet
separated himself from the mass. Man had settled into the dull inertness
of a stagnant pool, and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up
his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. There
must be leaders before there can be history; the annals of mankind begin
in hero worship; the relations of superior and inferior need to be
established; and individual action and supremacy are the foundations
upon which all history is built. Only by stirring up the deep pool of
human life into seething turmoil and unrest could the tendency to
stagnation be overcome, the best and most aspiring rising to the top,
the dull and heavy sinking to the bottom, and the element of thought
permeating the whole with its vitalizing spirit.
When this phase of evolution is reached, we cease for the first time to
deal with species and genera in the mass and begin to deal with
individuals, who now emerge from the general group and stand above and
apart like great signal posts on the highway of progress. These heroes
are not alone those of the sword. They are the leaders in art, in
literature, in science, in thought, in every domain; the men who stand,
above, supreme and shining, and toward whose elevation the whole mass
below surges slowly but strenuously upward. The third phase of human
evolution, therefore, is that of the emergence of the individual as the
leader, lawgiver, teacher of mankind, each leader forming a goal for the
emulation of all below. And this condition is the legitimate outcome of
war, which, terrible as it always has been, was the only agency that
could rapidly break up the stagnancy of early communism and send man
upward in a swirl toward the heights of civilization.
To give the history of this phase of evolution would be to give the
history of mankind, and would be aside from the purpose of this work.
All that need be attempted, in support of our argument, is to present
some general deductions from human history, indicating the leading
features of the service man has received from war.
Conflict between man and man was at first vague and inconsequential. It
was only after settled and organized communities, based originally on
the family relation, and held together by the possession of property in
common, had been formed, that war became more effective in its results.
The chief of these results, in the early days, were two: the breaking up
of the old equality of power and possession, and the development of
larger and more powerful communities. The head man of the village
community, or the herding clan, possessed some delegated authority but
no political supremacy over his fellows. Equality existed alike in
theory and in fact. Battle between neighboring clans was the first step
toward breaking this up. The conquered clan became subordinated to the
victorious one, and the chief of the victors, as the representative of
his clan, exercised an authority over the subject community which he did
not possess at home. The degree of subordination differed from the mild
form of tribute-paying to that of personal slavery. But in either case
we see the old condition of equality vanishing, and that of class
distinctions and the relation of superior and inferior arising, while
the power of the chief advances from a delegated authority to an
established supremacy.
The second outcome of this early phase of war was an increase in the
size of political groups. The conquered were forced to aid the
conquerors in war as in peace; clans combined to resist aggression;
minor communities grew into organized tribes; tribes developed into
nations as a result of warlike operations. This growth in political
organization was a necessary and inevitable result of continued warfare.
The aggressors gathered all the strength possible. The assailed peoples
did the same. Temporary alliances grew into permanent ones. Larger
armies were formed, larger communities were organized, national
development advanced at a rate tenfold, probably a hundredfold, more
rapidly than it would have done had peaceful conditions persisted.
Side by side with tribal and national consolidation went on the growth
in leadership. The head man became a war chief, the war chief a king.
Success made him a hero to his people. He grew to be the lord of
conquered tribes; into his hands fell the bulk of the spoils; the
relation of equality of possessions vanished as the plunder taken by the
army was distributed unequally among the victors. Below the principal
leader came his ablest followers, each claiming and receiving a
proportionate share in the new division of power and wealth. In short,
when the era of war had become fully inaugurated, the old social and
political relations of mankind were broken up with great rapidity;
equality of power was replaced by inequality, which steadily grew more
and more declared; equality of wealth in like manner vanished; in all
directions the individual emerged from the mass, class distinctions
became intricate, and the relations of rich and poor, of king, noble,
citizen, and slave, completely replaced the old communal organization of
mankind.
War was the great agent in this evolution. It might have emerged slowly
in peace; it came with almost startling rapidity in war, and reached a
degree of power on the one hand and subordination on the other that
could scarcely ever have appeared had conditions of peace prevailed.
With this growth of great nations came a rapid development in political
science, in legal institutions, in social relations. An enormous advance
was made, in a limited period, in the civilization of mankind; as a
result, not of the devastation and slaughter of war, but of its
influence upon human organization.
It was the principle of reward for ability to which the leaders of men
owed their supremacy. When nations were organized this same principle
took another and very useful form. The distribution of wealth had become
strikingly unequal. There were endless grades of distinction between the
supremely wealthy and the absolutely poor. The wealthy were ready to
lavish their money in return for articles of pleasure and luxury. The
poor, in their thirst for a share of wealth, were strongly stimulated to
inventive activity in producing new and desirable wares. Inequality
became the mainspring of business activity; thought and inventive
ingenuity were strongly exercised; a rapid progress went on in the
production of new devices, new methods, and new articles of necessity
and luxury; manufacture flourished, commerce increased, civilization
appeared, the whole as a legitimate outcome of the conditions brought
about by war.
This phase of human evolution, as may be seen, was radically different
from that already considered, arising from the development of sacerdotal
influence and priestly power. They worked together, no doubt. The
establishment of the great primitive empires, as a peaceful process, was
greatly complicated by war, which tended steadily to increase the
temporal power of the ruler and enable him in time to control by the
sword alone. But it is interesting to find that long after the old
system was practically overthrown its shadow still lay upon the nations.
The powerful war monarchs of Assyria led their armies to conquest in the
name of the national deity, whose vicegerents they claimed to be. The
autocratic emperors of Rome went so far as to claim in some cases to be
gods themselves. Even in modern Russia some of this dignity pertains to
the emperor, as the supreme head of the national church. Old ideas are
proverbially hard to kill.
But the mission of the priesthood by no means stopped here. The priests
rose to influence as the teachers as well as the leaders of the people.
The members of this class, set aside from manual occupations, and
devoted to thought upon the relations of man to the divine, played an
important part in the development of the human mind. As a result of
their speculative activity of thought the old religious systems sank
into the background; the simple worship of primitive times was
overshadowed by intricate mythological systems, splendid in worship and
creed; cosmogonies and philosophies were devised; and human thought,
once fairly set loose in this field, went on with great energy and
imaginative fervor.
Literature arose as a result of this activity of thought. It took at
first the form of hymns, speculative essays, magical formulas, dogmas,
ordinances of worship, etc. By degrees it grew more secular in form,
until in the end secular literature arose. This was greatly stimulated
by the conditions of inequality arising from war. In the same manner as
the reward for merit in invention stimulated men to activity in the
mechanical arts, so the hope of reward for literary production stirred
up men to the composing of poems, histories, and other works of thought.
In both directions, physical and mental, men were stimulated to the most
active exertions by the conditions of inequality in wealth and power,
and the consequent desire to obtain a share of the money lavished by the
rich and the authority similarly lavished by the powerful.
The broad general view here taken must suffice for our consideration of
this phase of human evolution. It brings the story of the development of
man closely up to the present stage of political and social
organizations and relations. It may be said, in conclusion of this
section of our work, that the powerful agency of war, so active and
important in the past, has in great part lost its utility in the
present, and bids fair to be brought to an end before the world is much
older. It is no longer needed, nearly or quite all that it is capable of
doing for mankind being accomplished, while the equally powerful
agencies of commerce, travel, leagues of nations, and other conditions
of modern origin have taken its place.
War, while yielding many useful results, has given rise to others whose
utility is questionable, and whose ill-effects it will take much time
and effort to set aside. The inequality of power to which war gave rise
continues in many parts of the world, and the inequality of wealth shows
signs of increase instead of diminution. Once useful, they have
developed to an injurious extent. The result is a state of unrest,
discontent, and more or less active opposition, which constitutes a
condition of permanent conflict, a deep dissatisfaction with existing
institutions abnormal to a justly organized society. War has become in
great measure useless; but the scaffolding from which it built up the
edifice of civilization remains, and stands as a tottering ruin
threatening to engulf mankind in its fall.
Ever since the triumph of autocracy in the Roman empire, the masses of
mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to
the natural rights of man. For century after century the struggle
against undue exercise of power has gone on, and the hereditary lords of
mankind have lost, stage by stage, their usurped power, until in the
modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen
agents of the people. But the autocracy of wealth still holds its own,
and is growing more and more formidable, and against this the wave of
opposition is now rising. Everywhere man is earnestly and sternly
demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and
art. What the outcome of this demand will be it is impossible to say. It
must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind; but
only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be.
We have endeavored in this brief treatise to trace the development of
man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of
the tropic woods, through the phases of his later condition as an erect
surface dweller, his conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom,
his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final
warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. Each of these
contests has left its results; the first in the forest nomads of the
eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the
steppes and deserts, the village communities of Russia and the paternal
empire of China, the third in the enlightened nations of Europe and
America.
For how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued it is
impossible to say. Its first phase must have been of interminable
slowness; its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate; its third
of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years.
Millions of years have probably passed away since it began, yet the
period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose
greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that
of the lower animals during this period. Physically, the development of
man has been inconsiderable--much less apparently than that of many
other animals. Mentally, it has been enormous. The whole of nature's
influences, in new and often adverse situations, have been brought to
bear upon man's mind, and as the result we have civilized man as
contrasted with the anthropoid ape. And the end is not yet. The era of
war in man's development is near its close, and a new era of peace,
under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity, seems about
to begin. Its outcome no man can predict, but it may far surpass in
beneficial results all that has gone before, and carry man upward to an
extraordinarily elevated mental plane.
XII
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY