t. For several thousand
years China has almost stood still. It comes down to us as the
fossilized representative of an antique system, physically active but
mentally inert, its organization rigidly fixed, and not to be disturbed
unless the empire itself is rent to pieces.




XI

WARFARE AND CIVILIZATION


Long before the second phase of the evolution of man had been completed
the third phase had begun, that of the conflict of man with man. The
animal kingdom once subdued, and nature made man's friend and servant,
the human race increased and multiplied until the borders of communities
met and hostile relations arose between them. A fight for place began, a
struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and
for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which
the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring,
and aggressive rose to power and control.

It was the final act in the great drama of "natural selection," which
had been played upon the stage of the earth since the first appearance
of living forms; the last and most ruthless of them all, for the
instigating cause was no longer merely the pressure for a share of the
food supply, but to this was added the lust for power and place, the
hunger for wealth and dominion, the insatiable appetite for autocratic
control. Millions upon millions of men were swept away by the sword,
and by its attendant demons, famine and pestilence; and still the
stronger and abler climbed to the top, the weaker and inferior
succumbed; and the intellectual evolution of man went on with enhanced
rapidity as the harvest of the sword was gathered in, and the merciless
reapers of men swept in successive columns over the earth, each a stage
higher in mental ability than the preceding.

This phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history.
Before its advent man had no history. It would be as useful to attempt
to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his
progress. History is the record of ind