at the beginnings of agriculture and commerce marked
the beginnings of the greatest social revolution in the whole career of
mankind. Henceforth the conditions for the maintenance of physical life
became different from what they had been throughout the past history of
the animal world. It was no longer necessary for men to quarrel for
their food like dogs over a bone; for they could now obtain it far more
effectively by applying their intelligence to the task of utilizing the
forces of inanimate nature; and the due execution of such a task was in
no wise assisted by wrath and contention, but from the outset was rather
hindered by such things.

Such were the beginnings of industrial civilization. Out of its
exigencies, continually increasing in complexity, have proceeded,
directly or indirectly, the arts and sciences which have given to modern
life so much of its interest and value. But more important still has been
the work of industrial civilization in the ethical field. By furnishing
a wider basis for political union than mere blood-relationship, it
greatly extended the area within which moral obligations were recognized
as binding. At first confined to the clan, the idea of duty came at
length to extend throughout a state in which many clans were combined
and fused, and as it thus increased in generality and abstractness, the
idea became immeasurably strengthened and ennobled. At last, with the
rise of empires, in which many states were brought together in pacific
industrial relations, the recognized sphere of moral obligation became
enlarged until it comprehended all mankind.

XIII.

Methods of Political Development, and Elimination of Warfare.

This rise of empires, this coalescence of small groups of men into
larger and larger political aggregates, has been the chief work of
civilization, when looked at on its political side.[13] Like all the
work of evolution, this process has gone on irregularly and
intermittently, and its ultimate tendency has only gradually become
apparent. This process of coalescence has from the outset been brought
about by the needs of industrial civilization, and the chief obstacle
which it has had to encounter has been the universal hostility and
warfare bequeathed from primeval times. The history of mankind has been
largely made up of fighting, but in the careers of the most progressive
races this fighting has been far from meaningless, like the battles of
kites and crows. In