icialism," we may get a flexible view of life
that will be in accordance with the facts, and will help us to get rid
of the arbitrary division of man's history into the three periods termed
Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization. However desirable this division
may be for historic purposes in general, it is only confusing in an
effort to study the nature of man.

In the life and origin of the race, the fact is always evidenced that
the Ego through its growth and persistence is always drawing to itself
from the current of environment all things which it feels desirable to
its life and growth. This must be a necessary condition of survival. In
the long journey from amoeba to man, any circumstance causing a complete
halt for even a brief period meant extinction, while even a persistent
interference produced a weakened organism, if not an arrest of
development.

This then is the origin of the "Master Instinct," hunger. When we
consider the various emotions growing from the force of this vital urge,
as developed by adaptation to an ever-changing environment, we are able
to realize fully why it bulks so large in moulding and shaping the
destiny of the race.

All psychologists are agreed in classing under the nutritive instinct
such activities as acquisition, storing and hoarding. During a period
variously estimated as a quarter of a million to two million years, man
and his animal antecedents responded to the hunger instinct, in the
manner and by the same methods as did the various jungle animals. He
secured his prey by capture, or killed it wherever found, the one
condition being his power to get and to hold. Later tribal organization
arose, and food and shelter were held in common. But since the folk-ways
commended raiding and looting between alien tribes, here was presented
an alluring chance to secure both booty and glory to men trained in the
"get and hold" process of acquiring. For thousands of years life itself
depended upon this unerring exercise.

It was during the period outlined that man developed his big brain
(cerebrum) involving the central nervous system. Furthermore, it was
developed by, and trained to, these particular reactions. The
far-reaching control of the mind must be remembered, as upon this
through his racial heritage must be based his conflicting impulses.
These must be reckoned with in our conclusions with regard to
present-day behavior, economic or otherwise.

During the last thirty years, psyc