, but rather the
joint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual support
and dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealous
attitude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of members
within the group were in a position to turn this state of the common
sentiment to their own particular advantage.

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; long
enough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner of
life,--longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed since
history began. Special interests--e.g., personal and family
interests--will have been present and active in these days of the
beginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admit
of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout the
workday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small and
feeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies in
such pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount
business of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a common
livelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularist
ambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the story
of the group in question would have been ended, and another and more
suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by its
extinction.

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operations
would grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The margin
between production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional
scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process
of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control
exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the
common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and
sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it
would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and
incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies
touching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion
that the collective interest of the group at large was placed in
jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members from
without. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in the
defeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of any
alien; and, under compulsion of