, Adaptation,

ey are still the same, heredity sufficiently explains his having them. Thus the senses, perception, the simpler forms of comparison and inference, the appetites and many of the instincts and emotions are common to us with the apes

e habits of life under which our species (now ranking zoologically as a Family) has been developed. And this adaptation I shall assume to have been brought about under conditions of natural selection: human races, as we now see them, being the survivors of many variations, more or less successful, and the others having been destroyed. For good judges

or political type of the society in which a man lives, his place therein, geographical circumstances, religious institutions and the countless causes that govern manners and customs. In the lives of most men these traits are not necessary; they may be adopted and cast aside more than once in an individual's career: they are temporary accommodations due to education, imitation, tradition; and, in fa

ock and the Conditio

usually retreat from them; but, when attacked, defend themselves with fury. From other animals the male gorilla has nothing to fear, and he defends his family against leopards; the chimpanzee is said to fight leopards with varying success; and, as for the orang, Dyak chiefs told Wallace that no animals dare attack him, except crocodiles and pythons, and that he kills both of them.[29] The food of these apes is chiefly fruit and the tender shoots of trees and bamboos; but they sometimes eat eggs and young birds; and the gorilla is said to eat small mammals: in confinement they all take cooked flesh freely. Socially, they hardly get beyond family life. Orangs male and female are even seen alone, and young ones together without parents; gorillas are seen in family parties; chimpanzees in families, and occasionally three or four families in company. It is said that gorillas and ch

) hesitate to admit that our minds can have had a similar history. But as everywhere else in the animal kingdom mind and body constitute one organism, it is reasonable to consider whether th

t I lay no stress upon that. Most monkeys are almost exclusively frugivorous; the only Primate, except man, that depends a good deal upon animal food is, I believe, the crab-eating macaque (Macacus cynomolgus), of the Burmese and Malay littoral; yet monkeys are the most alert and active of animals; some of them are amongst the most courageous; anthropoids are amongst the most powerful. A carnivorous diet alone

ollecting," such as may be seen, e. g., amongst the Fuegians. But the collecting state is plainly degenerate, the resource of tribes fallen into distress; it cannot have been the first stage, because it implies no conditions that

led the human stock to extend the range of its hunting (allowing for gradual adaptation to climate or accommodation by clothing) to any country that supplied the requisite prey; and, accordingly, in course of time, it wandered t

, such as always go in troops, the gregarious instinct may have remained with them as a latent character. Still, it is my conjecture that man became gregarious, or recovered the social habit, because of the utility of co-operative hunting; so that he became at first a sort of wolf-ape. This will be discussed in the next section. I observe here, however, that the hypothesis helps us to understand why man is still imperfectly sociable; the purpose of the hunting-pack, each wolf-ape seeking prey, was unfavourable to social life in other relations. That in human life group-consciousness preceded self-consciousness is a groundless and f

for he-we know not at what date-invented them. These may be summed up under the names of Magic and Animism; and in subseq

entiated in body and mind from the anthropoid stock, I take to be four: the h

rimal

trast with the elaborate polities of some hymenoptera and of the termites: these have much greater superficial resemblance to modern human societies; but, in fact, they are families rather than societies; their interesting activities will one d

e monkeys. Many of the cats are believed to pair monogamously; but it is doubtfu

ecies of deer;-after the breeding-season,

activities, in making their burrows, dams, etc., have results which, especially in the case of the beavers, look as if the animals had worked upon a common, premeditated plan. Gregariousness exists widel

leaders, and combine in mutual defence. This is especially effective with the baboons-who, however, are polygamous. A very similar type is characteristic of cattle; who also hav

August) a pack of wolves breaks up into pairs; but whether their pairing is for life or merely seasonal is disputed; and it is also doubtful whether the male takes any share

y gives the best explanation of human nature as we now find it? and (b) for which type can we give the best reason why it should have been adopted? So I point out (a) that man, in characte

uarded against all other men. Or he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the gorilla; for all the natives 'agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the communi

of hypotheses with little evidence or rational connection, he arrives at an explanation of certain savage laws of avoidance, exogamy, etc. More recently, Prof. Freud has produced a most ingenious and entertaining essay on Totem und Tabu, in which he builds upon the same foundations. You easily see how the "?dipus complex" emerges from such a primitive state of things, but will hardly, without reading the work, imagine the wealth of speculation it contains or its literary attractiveness. Atkinson probably relied upon the supposed parallel case of wild cattle and horses, because

t a stronger appetite for animal food than the gorilla does-strong enough to make him hunt for prey; or by such a change of climate in the region he inhabited-say from sub-tropical to temperate-as to make his former diet scarce, especially in winter, so that he became a hunter to avoid starvation. Every one admits that he became a hunter at some time: why no

s and feet adapted to running: though at the very first there may have been little need to run, as he was not yet an object of terror; "we must remember that if man was unskilful, animals were unsuspicious."[36] I suppose him, at first, to have fallen to with hands and teeth: combining with others in a hungry

and, for the same reason, pairing, as among wolves, was the most efficient form of sexual relationship. But, in my judgment, it is altogether vain to try to deduce from this form of society, which may have existed three or four million years ago, any of the known customs of

logy of the

remarks how readily the proceedings of man and dog "are intelligible to one another. Every whine or bark of the dog, each of his fawning, savage, or timorous movements is the exact counterpart of what would have been the man's behaviour, had he felt similar emotions. As the man understands the thoughts of the dog, so the dog understands the thoughts of the man, by attending to his natural

nsatisfying civilisation have not altered the fundamental nature of man, and the successful hunter of to-day becomes a primeval savage, remorseless, triumphant, full of a wild, exultant joy, which none but those who have lived in the wilderness, and depended on their success as hunters for their daily food, can ever know or comprehend."[38] To the hunter my paradox must seem a truism. And that the hunter temporarily released from c

p-dog that undergoes reversion kills by night the sheep on neighbouring farms without any call of hunger; and, says Mr. Thompson Seton (writing of the natives of North Canada), "the mania for killing that is seen in so many white men, is evidently a relic of savagery; for

by a distinct tendency, sometimes called "destructiveness," perhaps a latent character derived fr

k seems to be an association of personal acquaintances, and would resent the presence of a total stranger."[42] Gregariousness of wolves must be reduced by failure of game (as by the destruction of bison in North America), and still more by the encroachments of civilisation (as in France). The primitive human pack, probably, was more constantly gregarious than wolves are: (a) because its individuals, having no instinctive or traditionary knowledge of hunting, were more dependent on co-operation; and (b) because the

far (at least) as that all united to defend any associate against aggression from outside the pack. Perceptive and contagious sympathy, however, extend beyond the limits of the pack or the species. Most of the higher mammalia can read the state of mind of others, though of widely different k

very sort of animal in their habitat, as the pal?olithic Europeans did many thousands of years ago. From the outset the human pack must have come into competition with the true carnivores, must have defended itself against them, may have discovered that attack was the safest defence, and may have been victorious even without weapons. Mr. G. P. Sanderson writes: "It is universally believed

range of about fifty miles.[44] Very many generations must have elapsed before the deviation of our forebears from anthropoid habits resulted in the formation of so many packs as to necessitate the practical delimitation of hunting-grounds. Then the aggressiveness of the pack turned upon strangers of its own species; the first wars arose, and perhaps cannibalism on th

follow him as long as he is manifestly the best of

the ground of the "instinct of self-abasement" (McDougall), so far as the attitudes involved in such su

ulation; in order that, when the present leade

writes of dogs on cattle-breeding establishments on the pampas, that he presumes "they are very much like feral dogs and wolves in their habits. Their quarrels are incessant; but when a fight begins the head of the pack, as a rule, rushes to the spot," and tries to part the combatants-not always successfully. "But from the foremost in strength and power down to the weakest there is a gradation of authority; each one knows just how far he can go, which companion he can bully when in a bad temper or wishing to as

when the first begin to flag; setting some to lie in ambush while the rest drive the prey in their direction. Such devices imply intelligent co-operation, some means of communicating ideas, patience and self-control in the interests of the pack

s is equally discordant, or that the human pack was ever normally like that. Galton, indeed, says: "Many savages are so unamiable and morose as to have hardly any object in associating together, besides that of mutual support;"[51] but this is by no means true of all savages. At any rate, the steadier supply of food obtained by our race since the adoption of pastoral or agricultural economy, with other circumstances, has greatly modified the greedy and morose attitude in many men and disguised it in others; though it reappears under conditions of extreme social dislocation, and it is a proverb that "thieves quarrel over their plunde

hed in primitive man by his having resorted to co-ope

nconvenient enemies outwitted, by acquiring a knowledge of their footprints and other visible signs of neighbourhood, and by discrimination of all the noises they make. The habits and manners of prey and of enemies, their favourite lairs, feeding-grounds and watering-places, their paths through forest, marsh, thicket and high grass, must all be learnt: so must their speed, endurance, means and methods of attack and defence. The whole country within the range of the pack m

branches and the great spiny fruits [of the durian] with every appearance of rage, causing such a shower of missiles as effectually kept us from approaching too near the tree. This habit of throwing down branches has been doubted; but I have, as here narrated, observed it myself on three separate occasions."[52] The importance of the observation consists in its proving the existence in an anthropoid of the impulse to use mis

pon them, as in making weapons or planning a hunt; indefiniteness or confusion in such matters was fatal. The contrast between growing memory of the past and present experience, between practical ideas and the actions realising them that had been suspended until

vel have leaders), (8) emulation, (9) precedence; but not by (1) interest in the chase and in killing, nor (4) aggressiveness, nor (10) strategy and perseverance in attack, nor (11) greed; and herd-life affords no conditions for the development of intelligence and dexterity, nor for any of the physical characters that distinguish man. Herd-life does not involve the great and decisive change which is implied in the ev

of Man established

m to an opinion on such matters, whilst it is helpful to have clear ideas, however tentative, I shall adopt the views of Dr. Arthur Keith in his work on The Antiquity of Man, based on estimates published by Prof. Sollas.[53] On turning to p. 509 of that work, a genealogical tree will be found, showing the probable lines of descent of the higher Primates. The separation of the human from the great anthropoid stock is represented as having happened at about the last third of the Oligocene period-say 2,000,000 years ago (or, according to th

1200 c.c.; Eoanthropus, according to Dr. Keith, rises to 1400;[54] a Neanderthal skull has been measured at 1600 c.c.; the modern English average

ed, and then the beginning of this culture must be pushed back into the Pliocene.[55] In Pliocene (and perhaps Miocene) deposits have further been discovered numerous "eoliths": stones so roughly chipped that they do not imply an idea-pattern; so that, whilst many arch?ologists accept them as of human workmanship, some experts dispute their claim to be considered artefacts. Of course, there must be eoliths; the only question is whether we have yet unearthed any of them. Our forefathers cannot have begun by shaping stones to a definite figure and special purpose. Beginning with stones taken up as they lay, they discovered that a broken stone with a sharp edge inflicted a worse wound than a whole one; then broke stones to obtain this advantage; used sharp fragments to weight clubs; and very slowly advanced to the manufacture of recognisable axes and spear-heads, meanwhile discovering other use

proach to complete adaptation has been impossible, not only for want of time, but also because of rapid changes in the structure of civilisation, the social protection of some eccentrics, the persistence of the hunting-life as a second resource or as a pastime, and by the frequent recurrence of warfare-that is to say, man-hunting. To civilisation we are, for the most part, merely accommodated by experience, education, tradition and social

food, immediately, or perhaps at any time. Even the diet of the wolf, in North-East Canada, includes "much fruit, especially the uva-ursi"; and the coyote there also eats berries;[57] so does the jackal in India. Savage women everywhere subsist largely on roots and fruits. Dr. Keith says the teeth and jaws of the Neanderthal species were adapted to a coarse vegetable

r Consequences o

-pack sheds some light upon our path; but the light soon grows faint; for the primitive human, from the first more intelligent than wolves, and inheriting from the ape-stock qualities of character which the new life greatly modified but could not extirpate, must under pressure of selection have become, after not many ages, an animal unlike any other. Just at the end, again, something concerning th

tter origins than are traceable in apes and wolves. As the use of good stone weapons by living savages and the occurrence of stone weapons in deposits of various age in the Pleistocene-less and less perfectly made the further we go back-justify us in assuming that there must have been eoliths of even cruder workmanship at remoter dates, so the possession by savages of extensive languages, intrica

ccused of being incapable of prolonged attention!) will sit for days working at a spear or an axe: they are inattentive only to what does not interest them. Many children from about the sixth year come under the same sort of fascination-digging, building, maki

pt in hunting, war, and magical or religious rites. Hunting, moreover, is (as I have said) especially encouraging to onomatop?ic expression in imitating the noises of animals, etc. It was still more favourable, perhaps, to the growth of gesture-language in imitating the behaviour of animals and the actions involved in circumventing and attacking them. Increasing powers of communication were extremely useful, and the pack must have tried to develop them. Without the endeavour to communicate, there could never have been a language better than

t conception of the orbital part of the third frontal convolution is well founded, namely, that it takes part in the mechanism of speech, then we have grounds for believing that the Piltdown man had reached that point of brain-development when speech had become a possibility. When one looks at the lower jaw, however, and the projecting canine teeth, one hesitates to allow him more than a potential ability."[60] The jaw had not undergone the characteristic changes which in modern man give freedom to the tongue in the articulation of words.[61] But Dr. Keith "cannot detect any feature in the frontal, parietal or occipital areas which clearly separate th

an nature; and it certainly points to the probability that some custom was early established with regard to marriage. In Prof. Westermarck's opinion our species was originally monogamous.[64] Supposing this to have been the custom, as it is amongst many Primates, could it have persisted after the formation of the hunting-pack? According to Mr. Thompson Seton, wolves pair "probably for life";[65] but this is disputed; and so it is whether or no the male of a seasonal pair takes part in caring for the puppies.[66] Of the primitive human stock one may say that whilst, on the one hand, the association of many males and females in the sa

s came into use, the attitude toward the territory or lair will have been extended to include them; indeed, it seems to be instinctive even in lower Primates. "In the Zoological Gardens," says Darwin, "a monkey, which had weak teeth, used to break open nuts with a stone; and I was assured by the keepers that, after using the stone, he hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here, then, we have the idea of property."[69] Among the half-wolf train-dogs of Canada, the claims of one to property seem to be recognised by others; for a dog will defend its cache of food against another that ordinarily it fe

have been appeased by the wergeld. The payment, indeed, was not the whole transaction; it implied an acknowledgment of guilt and of the obligation to make amends; but these things would not have mollified an enemy nurtured in the tradition of the blood-feud, if silver had not been dear to him. It is still accepted as compensation for injuries that seem difficult to measure by the ounce. Wealth gives rank, and gratifies not only the greed but also the emulative spirit of the pack. Acquisitiveness is an essential trait of aristocracy, and adhesiveness of its perpetuity. Homespun prudence belongs, in our ancestry, to a more recent stratum of motives; we see it a

lates after Brehm how "in Abyssinia, when baboons of one species (C. gelada) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields, they sometimes encounter troops of another species (C. hamadryas), and then a fight ensues. The Geladas roll down great stones, which the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then both species, making a great uproar, rush furiously against each other."[74] As packs of the wolf-ape i

f equilibrium has been established. On the other hand, it is a shallow sort of profundity that insists upon interpreting every war as a struggle for nutrition, an effort to solve the social problem. Aggressiveness and insatiable greed are characteristic

nfluential as war: an immense subject, for the outlines of w

ng outright, and they give scope to emulation. Emulation is a motive in the race for wealth, in every honourable career, even in addiction to science and learning: though here the main stress is upon an instinct older than the pack-curiosity, a general character of the Primates. That children at first play alone, later play together, and then "make up sides," repeats the ch

r some advance had been made in the customs of eating. Savages usually cram to repletion when possible, and with huge gusto, for there may not soon be another opportunity. If uproarious feasting was advantageous physically and socially (as till recently we all thought it was), addiction to the practice was a ground of survival; and laughter (a discharge of undirected energy, as Spencer says), being its natural expression and enhancement, shared in its perpetuation. This social origin agrees with

and bodily expressions of grief were developed by the social

isation of

le logic of national characteristics and, unhappily, are truly human, since nothing like them can be traced in the animal world. It would, for instance, be a grave mistake to compare a tiger with a bloodthirsty executioner of the Reign of Terror, since the former only satisfies his natural appetite in preying on other animals. The atrocities of the trials for witchcraft, the indiscriminate slaughter committed by the Negroes on the coast of Guinea, the sacrifice of human victims by the Khonds, the dismemberment of living men b

s (as that the wounded, sick, or aged must not amount to an encumbrance), that we may suppose natural selection to have favoured the growth of effective sympathy, not merely in mutual defence, but so far as it is actually found at present in backward tribes. It nowhere seems to be excessive; and its manifestation in some civilised races seems to depend not upon a positive increase of benevolence in the generality, but (iii) upon the breaking down here and there of conditions that elsewhere oppose and inhibit it. Thus the generosity, mercy and magnanimity that constitute the chivalrous ideal, depend (I beli

ntinue to do so, and may go on varying even beyond the limits of biological utility; why in human life may not this happen with benevolence (or with any other passion or virtue); so th

ise with them and to help them. (b) When the mind is highly developed, images of past actions and motives continually recur; "and that feeling of dissatisfaction or even misery which invariably results ... from any dissatisfied instinct would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind

or judgments in another's mind together with approval or disapproval of our actions; and this is the meaning under (c), the third head. But knowledge of another's thoughts is not sympathy, except so far as, being accompanied with assent to his judgment, there is participation in his feelings of approval or disapproval; and, if we dissent from his judgment, there may, i

e moral sense or conscience, accounts more especially for "remorse of conscience"; and that (c), the third con

express itself without language. In an original and suggestive book[80] Mr. Trotter has shown that a herd (pack, tribe or nation) necessarily approves of whatever actions are done in its interests as good or right, and disapproves of the contrary actions as bad or wrong. Confident that its beliefs and customs are good and right, the pack persecutes dissenters and nonconformists. "Good" is a relative idea. "'The good are good warriors and hunters,' said a Pawnee

plough, he could not have run his friend Clitus through with a spear." The sick and aged were now less an encumbrance than they had been to hunters. Those who could not endure a settled life wandered away in their old pursuits. The more aggressive clans slaughtered one another in the vendetta. Social pressure and hanging eliminated many of the more idle, improvident, dishonest and unruly, whose instincts resisted "accommodation.

ess" (to use W. K. Clifford's definition of morality) have been expounded by the more penetrating and comprehensive minds-prophets, poets, philosophers; and some disciples have understood them and have persuaded many to believe. Nor have such luminaries arisen only in the later phases of culture when their writings have been delivered or their sayings recorded. Probably it was some one man who first pointed out to a tribe that had ignored the fact, that whether a wrong had been done by accident or on purpose affected the agent's guilt and ought to affect the penalty exacted. Some one man, probably, first saw what injus

of the Imagin

en impossible without a great development of his brain; and, accordingly, it appears that Eoanthropus, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, had a skull with three times the cubic capacity of the anthropoids. With the growth of the brain came a continually increasing fecundity of ideas. "Piltdown man saw, heard, felt, thought, and dreamt much as we do."[82] The use of ideas is to foresee events and prepare for them beforehand: the great advantage of distance-senses

latter beliefs, or imaginative delusions, hamper them in so many ways, waste so much time, lead them sometimes into such dark and cruel practices, that one may be excused for wondering whether their bigger brains can have been, on the whole, of any biological advantage to them in comparison with the anthropoids. The anthropoids live by common sense. So do savages, and they have much more of it; but the anthropoids seem not to be troubled by magic and animism. We must suppose that the common sense of primitive man increased age by age, as he became more and more perfectly adapted to the hunting-life

titious to common-sense actions, give confidence without weakening endeavour. To curse, or to "point the bone," does not create but merely expresses a malevolent purpose; and, although sometimes fatal by suggestion, is on the whole better than to assassinate. Taboos do more good by protecting person and property and custom than they do harm by restricting the use of foods. Belief in imaginary evils waiting upon secret sins exerts, whilst supported by social unanimity, a control upon all kinds of behaviour: it is the beginning of the "religious sanction," and one sort of conscience. The dread of spirits that prowl at night keeps people in the family-cave or by the camp-fire; and that is the best place

ol must establish itself for the preservation of tradition and custom. Conceivably this happened in several ways; but in fact (I believe) we know of only one, namely: First, the rule of wizards, who are chiefly old men credited with mysterious power that makes the boldest tribesman quail, such as the headmen and elders of an Australian tribe. In New Guinea, too, and much of Melanesia, the power of rulers, even though recognised as of noble birth, depends chiefly upon their reputation for Magic. And among the Bushmen secrets about poisons and antidotes and colours for painting (probably considered magical) were heirlooms in certain families of chiefs, and gave them caste.[84] Secondly, at a later stage, as the belief in ghosts more and more prevails, and ancestral ghosts are worshipped, and ghosts of heroes or chiefs become veritable gods, the priests who celebrate their worship strengthen the position of chiefs or kings descended from these gods, and help to maintain more comprehensive and coherent governments than those established upon Magic only; though to these later forms, also, and t