Happily the natural law in this matter has been misread. The individual in his sociological aspect is not the complete organism. He who attempts to live without association with his fellows dies. Nor is the nation the complete organism. If Britain attempted to live without cooperation with other nations, half the population would starve. The completer the cooperation the greater the vitality; the more imperfect the cooperation the less the vitality. Now, a body, the various parts of which are so interdependent that without coordination vitality is reduced or death ensures, must be regarded, in so far as the functions in question are concerned, not as a collection of rival organisms, but as one. This is in accord with what we know of the character of living organisms in their conflict with environment. The higher the organism, the greater the elaboration and interdependence of its part, the greater the need for coordination.53
If we take this as the reading of the biological law, the whole thing becomes plain; man’s irresistible drift away from conflict and towards cooperation is but the completer adaptation of the organism (man) to its environment (the planet, wild nature), resulting in a more intense vitality.
The psychological development involved in man’s struggle along these lines may best be stated by an outline sketch of the character of his advance.
When I kill my prisoner (cannibalism was a very common characteristic of early man), it is in “human nature” to keep him for my own larder without sharing him. It is the extreme form of the use of force, the extreme form of human individualism. But putrefaction sets in before I can consume him (it is as well to recall these real difficulties of the early man, because, of course, “human nature does not change”), and I am left without food.
But my two neighbors, each with his butchered prisoner, are in a similar difficulty, and though I could quite easily defend my larder, we deem it better on the next occasion to join forces and kill one prisoner at a time. I share mine with the other two; they share theirs with me. There is no waste through putrefaction. It is the earliest form of the surrender of the use of force in favor of cooperation—the first attenuation of the tendency to act on impulse. But when the three prisoners are consumed, and no more happen to be available, it strikes us that on the whole we should have done better to make them catch game and dig roots for us. The next prisoners that are caught are not killed—a further diminution of impulse and the factor of physical force—they are only enslaved, and the pugnacity which in the first case went to kill them is now diverted to keeping them at work. But the pugnacity is so little controlled by rationalism that the slaves starve, and prove incapable of useful work. They are better treated; there is a diminution of pugnacity. They become sufficiently manageable for the masters themselves, while the slaves are digging roots, to do a little hunting. The pugnacity recently expended on the slaves is redirected to keeping hostile tribes from capturing them—a difficult matter, because the slaves themselves show a disposition to try a change of mastership. They are bribed into good behavior by better treatment: a further diminution of force, a further drift towards cooperation; they give labor, we give food and protection. As the tribes enlarge, it is found that those have most cohesion where the position of slaves is recognized by definite rights and privileges. Slavery becomes serfdom or villeiny. The lord gives land and protection, the serf labor and military service: a further drift from force, a further drift towards cooperation, exchange. With the introduction of money even the form of force disappears: the laborer pays rent and the lord pays his soldiers. It is free exchange on both sides, and economic force has replaced physical force. The further the drift from force towards simple economic interest the better the result for the effort expended. The Tartar khan, who seizes by force the wealth in his State, giving no adequate return, soon has none to seize. Men will not work to create what they cannot enjoy, so that, finally, the khan has to kill a man by torture in order to obtain a sum which is the thousandth part of what a London tradesman will spend to secure a title carrying no right to the exercise of force from a Sovereign who has lost all right to the use or exercise of physical force, the head of the wealthiest country in the world, the sources of whose wealth are the most removed from any process involving the exercise of physical force.
But while this process is going on inside the tribe, or group, or nation, force and hostility as between differing tribes or nations remain; but not undiminished. At first it suffices for the fuzzy head of a rival tradesman to appear above the bushes for primitive man to want to hit it. He is a foreigner: kill him. Later, he only wants to kill him if he is at war with his tribe. There are periods of peace: diminution of hostility. In the first conflicts all of the other tribe are killed—men, women, and children. Force and pugnacity are absolute. But the use of slaves, both as laborers and as concubines, attentuates this; there is a diminution of force. The women of the hostile tribe bear children by the conqueror: there is a diminution of pugnacity. At the next raid into the hostile territory it is found that there is nothing to take, because everything has been killed or carried off. So on later raids the conqueror kills the chiefs only (a further diminution of pugnacity, a
