The Evolution of Human Government

70:1.1War is the nat­u­ral state and her­itage of evolv­ing man; peace is the so­cial yard­stick mea­sur­ing civ­i­liza­tion’s ad­vance­ment. Be­fore the par­tial so­cial­iza­tion of the ad­vanc­ing races man was ex­ceed­ingly in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic, ex­tremely sus­pi­cious, and un­be­liev­ably quar­rel­some. Vi­o­lence is the law of na­ture, hos­til­ity the au­to­matic re­ac­tion of the chil­dren of na­ture, while war is but these same ac­tiv­i­ties car­ried on col­lec­tively. And wher­ever and when­ever the fab­ric of civ­i­liza­tion be­comes stressed by the com­pli­ca­tions of so­ci­ety’s ad­vance­ment, there is al­ways an im­me­di­ate and ru­inous re­ver­sion to these early meth­ods of vi­o­lent ad­just­ment of the ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions.

70:1.2War is an an­i­mal­is­tic re­ac­tion to mis­un­der­stand­ings and ir­ri­ta­tions; peace at­tends upon the civ­i­lized so­lu­tion of all such prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. The San­gik races, to­gether with the later de­te­ri­o­rated Adamites and Nod­ites, were all bel­liger­ent. The An­don­ites were early taught the golden rule, and, even to­day, their Es­kimo de­scen­dants live very much by that code; cus­tom is strong among them, and they are fairly free from vi­o­lent an­tag­o­nisms.

70:1.3An­don taught his chil­dren to set­tle dis­putes by each beat­ing a tree with a stick, mean­while curs­ing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the vic­tor. The later An­don­ites used to set­tle dis­putes by hold­ing a pub­lic show at which the dis­putants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the au­di­ence de­cided the win­ner by its ap­plause.

70:1.4But there could be no such phe­nom­e­non as war un­til so­ci­ety had evolved suf­fi­ciently far to ac­tu­ally ex­pe­ri­ence pe­ri­ods of peace and to sanc­tion war­like prac­tices. The very con­cept of war im­plies some de­gree of or­ga­ni­za­tion.

70:1.5With the emer­gence of so­cial group­ings, in­di­vid­ual ir­ri­ta­tions be­gan to be sub­merged in the group feel­ings, and this pro­moted in­tra­tribal tran­quil­lity but at the ex­pense of in­ter­tribal peace. Peace was thus first en­joyed by the in-group, or tribe, who al­ways dis­liked and hated the out-group, for­eign­ers. Early man re­garded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

70:1.6But even this did not work at first. When the early chiefs would try to iron out mis­un­der­stand­ings, they of­ten found it nec­es­sary, at least once a year, to per­mit the tribal stone fights. The clan would di­vide up into two groups and en­gage in an all-day bat­tle. And this for no other rea­son than just the fun of it; they re­ally en­joyed fight­ing.

70:1.7War­fare per­sists be­cause man is hu­man, evolved from an an­i­mal, and all an­i­mals are bel­li­cose. Among the early causes of war were:

70:1.81. Hunger, which led to food raids. Scar­city of land has al­ways brought on war, and dur­ing these strug­gles the early peace tribes were prac­ti­cally ex­ter­mi­nated.

70:1.92. Woman scarcity—an at­tempt to re­lieve a short­age of do­mes­tic help. Woman steal­ing has al­ways caused war.

70:1.103. Van­ity—the de­sire to ex­hibit tribal prowess. Su­pe­rior groups would fight to im­pose their mode of life upon in­fe­rior peo­ples.

70:1.114. Slaves—need of re­cruits for the la­bor ranks.

70:1.125. Re­venge was the mo­tive for war when one tribe be­lieved that a neigh­bor­ing tribe had caused the death of a fel­low tribesman. Mourn­ing was con­tin­ued un­til a head was brought home. The war for vengeance was in good stand­ing right on down to com­par­a­tively mod­ern times.

70:1.136. Recre­ation—war was looked upon as recre­ation by the young men of these early times. If no good and suf­fi­cient pre­text for war arose, when peace be­came op­pres­sive, neigh­bor­ing tribes were ac­cus­tomed to go out in semifriendly com­bat to en­gage in a foray as a hol­i­day, to en­joy a sham bat­tle.

70:1.147. Re­li­gion—the de­sire to make con­verts to the cult. The prim­i­tive re­li­gions all sanc­tioned war. Only in re­cent times has re­li­gion be­gun to frown upon war. The early priest­hoods were, un­for­tu­nately, usu­ally al­lied with the mil­i­tary power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the at­tempt to sep­a­rate church and state.

70:1.15Al­ways these olden tribes made war at the bid­ding of their gods, at the be­hest of their chiefs or med­i­cine men. The He­brews be­lieved in such a “God of bat­tles”; and the nar­ra­tive of their raid on the Mid­i­an­ites is a typ­i­cal recital of the atro­cious cru­elty of the an­cient tribal wars; this as­sault, with its slaugh­ter of all the males and the later killing of all male chil­dren and all women who were not vir­gins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chief­tain of two hun­dred thou­sand years ago. And all this was ex­e­cuted in the “name of the Lord God of Is­rael.”

70:1.16This is a nar­ra­tive of the evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety—the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the prob­lems of the races—man work­ing out his own des­tiny on earth. Such atroc­i­ties are not in­sti­gated by De­ity, not­with­stand­ing the ten­dency of man to place the re­spon­si­bil­ity on his gods.

70:1.17Mil­i­tary mercy has been slow in com­ing to man­kind. Even when a woman, Deb­o­rah, ruled the He­brews, the same whole­sale cru­elty per­sisted. Her gen­eral in his vic­tory over the gen­tiles caused “all the host to fall upon the sword; there was not one left.”

70:1.18Very early in the his­tory of the race, poi­soned weapons were used. All sorts of mu­ti­la­tions were prac­ticed. Saul did not hes­i­tate to re­quire one hun­dred Phil­is­tine fore­skins as the dowry David should pay for his daugh­ter Michal.

70:1.19Early wars were fought be­tween tribes as a whole, but in later times, when two in­di­vid­u­als in dif­fer­ent tribes had a dis­pute, in­stead of both tribes fight­ing, the two dis­putants en­gaged in a duel. It also be­came a cus­tom for two armies to stake all on the out­come of a con­test be­tween a rep­re­sen­ta­tive cho­sen from each side, as in the in­stance of David and Go­liath.

70:1.20The first re­fine­ment of war was the tak­ing of pris­on­ers. Next, women were ex­empted from hos­til­i­ties, and then came the rec­og­ni­tion of non­com­bat­ants. Mil­i­tary castes and stand­ing armies soon de­vel­oped to keep pace with the in­creas­ing com­plex­ity of com­bat. Such war­riors were early pro­hib­ited from as­so­ci­at­ing with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have al­ways fed and nursed the sol­diers and urged them on to bat­tle.

70:1.21The prac­tice of declar­ing war rep­re­sented great prog­ress. Such dec­la­ra­tions of in­ten­tion to fight be­to­kened the ar­rival of a sense of fair­ness, and this was fol­lowed by the grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the rules of “civ­i­lized” war­fare. Very early it be­came the cus­tom not to fight near re­li­gious sites and, still later, not to fight on cer­tain holy days. Next came the gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion of the right of asy­lum; po­lit­i­cal fugi­tives re­ceived pro­tec­tion.

70:1.22Thus did war­fare grad­u­ally evolve from the prim­i­tive man hunt to the some­what more or­derly sys­tem of the later-day “civ­i­lized” na­tions. But only slowly does the so­cial at­ti­tude of amity dis­place that of en­mity.