with one another, by direct
competition or through adaptation, in the first case individuals
striving to obtain actually the same objects. Or, again, species
having the same relations to one another that individuals have,
contend in a similar manner.

Primitive groups of men, however, are not so definite; they are not
biological entities in any such sense as individuals and species are.
They are not definitely brought into conflict with one another, in
general, as contending for the same objects, and it is difficult to
see how, in the beginning, at least, economic pressure has been a
factor at all in their relations. Whatever may have been the motive
that for the most part was at work in primitive warfare, it is not at
all evident that _superior_ groups had any survival value. The groups
that contended with one another presumably differed most conspicuously
in the size of the group, and this was determined largely by chance
conditions. Other differences must have been quite subordinate to
this, and have had little selective value. The conclusion is that the
struggle of these groups with one another is not essentially a
_biological_ phenomenon.

The fact is that peace rather than war, taking the history of the
human race as a whole, is the condition in which selection of the
fittest is most active, for it is the power of adaptation to the
conditions of stable life, which are fairly uniform for different
groups over wide areas, that tests vitality and survival values, so
far as these values are biological. It may be claimed that war is very
often, if not generally, a means of interrupting favorable selective
processes, the unfit tending to prevail temporarily by force of
numbers, or even because of qualities that antagonize biological
progress. Viewing war in its later aspects, we can see that it is
often when nations are failing in natural competition that they resort
to the expedient of war to compensate for this loss, although they do
not usually succeed thereby in improving their economic condition as
they hope, or increase their chance of survival, or even demonstrate
their survival value. It is notorious that nations that conquer tend
to spend their vitality in conquest and introduce various factors of
deterioration into their lives. The inference is that a much more
complex relation exists among groups than the biological hypothesis
allows. Survival value indeed, as applied to men in groups, is not a
very clear