t more military; and so the art of war
has constantly improved. But why is one nation stronger than another?
In the answer to that, I believe, lies the key to the principal
progress of early civilisation, and to some of the progress of all
civilisation. The answer is that there are very many advantages--some
small and some great--every one of which tends to make the nation which
has it superior to the nation which has it not; that many of these
advantages can be imparted to subjugated races, or imitated by
competing races; and that, though some of these advantages may be
perishable or inimitable, yet, on the whole, the energy of civilisation
grows by the coalescence of strengths and by the competition of
strengths.

II.

By far the greatest advantage is that on which I observed before--that
to which I drew all the attention I was able by making the first of
these essays an essay on the Preliminary Age. The first thing to
acquire is if I may so express it, the LEGAL FIBRE; a polity
first--what sort of polity is immaterial; a law first--what kind of law
is secondary; a person or set of persons to pay deference to--though
who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies. 'There is,'
it has been said, 'hardly any exaggerating the difference between
civilised and uncivilised men; it is greater than the difference
between a tame and a wild animal,' because man can improve more. But
the difference at first was gained in much the same way. The taming of
animals as it now goes on among savage nations, and as travellers who
have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The most wild are
killed when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy to manage kept,
because they are more agreeable to human indolence, and so the keeper
likes them best. Captain Galton, who has often seen strange scenes of
savage and of animal life, had better describe the process:--'The
irreclaimably wild members of every flock would escape and be utterly
lost; the wilder of those that remained would assuredly be selected for
slaughter--whenever it was necessary that one of the flock should be
killed. The tamest cattle--those which seldom ran away, that kept the
flocks together, and those which led them homeward--would be preserved
alive longer than any of the others. It is, therefore, these that
chiefly become the parents of stock and bequeath their domestic
aptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly witnessed this process
of selection