If we glance through the past history of mankind we see an almost unbroken succession of aggression and combat between the various races, nations, and tribes. We can dimly see that this continual struggle did lead to a rather severe process of selection, as in the lower animal world. It can hardly be doubted that as a result of these struggles the strongest physically, the most ingenious in the use of weapons, and the best organised for war did survive, and that the weaker and lower were either exterminated or kept as slaves by the conquerors. This leads to alternation of success and failure. We see great conquerors and great material civilisations as a result of their accumulations of wealth and of slaves. Then, for a time, luxury and the arts flourished, and with them came rulers who encouraged degradation and vice at home, supported by more and more remote conquests. Then new conquerors arose, often lower in civilisation—barbarians, as they were termed—but higher in the simple domestic
virtues and a more natural life of productive labour. These again, or some portions of them, rose to luxury and civilisation, to lives of gross sensuality and the most cruel despotism, till outraged humanity raised up new conquerors to go over again the old terrible routine.
The periods of culmination of these old civilisations, founded always on conquest, massacre, and slavery, are marked out for us by the ruins of great cities, temples, and palaces, often of wonderful grandeur, and with indications of arts, science, and literature which still excite our admiration in Egypt and India, Greece and Rome; and thence through the Middle Ages down to our own time. But the inhumanities and horrors of these periods are inconceivable. A gloomy picture of them is given in that powerful book, The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade; and they are summarised in Burns' fine lines:
"Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn."
Think of the horrors of war in the perpetual wars of those days before the "Red Cross" service did anything to
alleviate them. Think of the old castles, many of which had besides the dungeons a salaried torturer and executioner. Think of the systematic tortures of the centuries, of the witchcraft mania and of the Inquisition. Think of the burnings in Smithfield and in every great city of Europe. Think of
"Truth for ever on the scaffold,
Wrong for ever on the throne."