s most valued possession,
his life, is in jeopardy, and his utmost powers are exerted for its
preservation. Every resource within his power is brought to bear to save
himself from wounds or death and to destroy his enemies. If the foes are
equal physically, victory is apt to come to those which are superior
mentally, which are quicker at devising new expedients, more alert in
providing against danger, more skilful in the use of weapons, abler in
combining their forces to act in unison. In short, the whole story of
mankind tells us that mental evolution has been greatly aided by the
influences of warfare, the reaction upon the mind of the effort at
self-preservation, the destruction of those at a lower level of
intellectual alertness, the preservation of the abler and more
energetic, the effect of conflict in bringing into activity all the
resources of the intellect, and the hereditary transmission of the
powers of mind thus developed. It is, undoubtedly, to war between man
and man, and the conflict with the adverse conditions of nature in the
colder regions of the earth, that man's development from his lowest to
his highest intellectual state has been largely due. This is by no means
to say that war is still necessary for this result. Other influences are
now at work, of equal or superior potency, and while the conflict with
nature and the conditions of society is still of importance, war between
man and man is no longer necessary as a mental stimulant. The time was,
and that not very far in the past, when it was an essential element in
human development.

If we descend to the lowest existing savages, however, it is to find
this agency almost non-existent. We can perceive in them no organized
warfare and no alert conflict with nature. They are as yet at the very
beginning of this stage of evolution, and it certainly exerts little
influence upon them. Nature is not adverse, life needs little thought or
exertion, they accept the world as they find it, without question or
revolt, and their thoughts and habits are as unchangeable as the laws of
the Medes and Persians. But the fact that active warfare does not now
exist among the lowest tribes of mankind, does not argue that such a
state has never existed. In truth, we maintain that primitive man is the
outcome of an active and long-continued warfare, and that his settled
and sluggish condition to-day is the ease that follows victory. He has
conquered and is at rest after hi