The broad general view here taken must suffice for our consideration of this phase of human evolution. It brings the story of the development of man closely up to the present stage of political and social organizations and relations. It may be said, in conclusion of this section of our work, that the powerful agency of war, so active and important in the past, has in great part lost its utility in the present, and bids fair to be brought to an end before the world is much older. It is no longer needed, nearly or quite all that it is capable of doing for mankind being accomplished, while the equally powerful agencies of commerce, travel, leagues of nations, and other conditions of modern origin have taken its place.
War, while yielding many useful results, has given rise to others whose utility is questionable, and whose ill-effects it will take much time and effort to set aside. The inequality of power to which war gave rise continues in many parts of the world, and the inequality of wealth shows signs of increase instead of diminution. Once useful, they have developed to an injurious extent. The result is a state of unrest, discontent, and more or less active opposition, which constitutes a condition of permanent conflict, a deep dissatisfaction with existing institutions abnormal to a justly organized society. War has become in great measure useless; but the scaffolding from which it built up the edifice of civilization remains, and stands as a tottering ruin threatening to engulf mankind in its fall.
Ever since the triumph of autocracy in the Roman empire, the masses of mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to the natural rights of man. For century after century the struggle against undue exercise of power has gone on, and the hereditary lords of mankind have lost, stage by stage, their usurped power, until in the modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen agents of the people. But the autocracy of wealth still holds its own, and is growing more and more formidable, and against this the wave of opposition is now rising. Everywhere man is earnestly and sternly demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and art. What the outcome of this demand will be it is impossible to say. It must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind; but only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be.
We have endeavored in this brief treatise to trace the development of man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of the tropic woods, through the phases of his later condition as an erect surface dweller, his conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom, his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. Each of these contests has left its results; the first in the forest nomads of the eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the steppes and deserts, the village communities of Russia and the paternal empire of China, the third in the enlightened nations of Europe and America.
For how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued it is impossible to say. Its first phase must have been of interminable slowness; its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate; its third of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years. Millions of years have probably passed away since it began, yet the period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that of the lower animals during this period. Physically, the development of man has been inconsiderable—much less apparently than that of many other animals. Mentally, it has been enormous. The whole of nature's influences, in new and often adverse situations, have been brought to bear upon man's mind, and as the result we have civilized man as contrasted with the anthropoid ape. And the end is not yet. The era of war in man's development is near its close, and a new era of peace, under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity, seems about to begin. Its outcome no man can predict, but it may far surpass in beneficial results all that has gone before, and carry man upward to an extraordinarily elevated mental plane.
XII
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY
The evolution of man from his animal ancestry has been a composite phenomenon, one by no means confined to the physical and intellectual conditions which we have so far considered, but embracing also features of moral and spiritual progress. The origin and growth of these need also to be reviewed, if we would present a fully rounded sketch of human evolution. So far as his physical form is concerned, man became practically completed ages ago, as the supreme effort of nature in the moulding and vitalizing of matter. When the arena of the struggle for existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the body, once so active, rapidly declined; and with the full employment of the intellect in the conflict with nature, physical evolution ceased, except in minor particulars, and the organic structure of man became practically fixed. The human animal, therefore, as a physical species, has reached a stage of permanence. And this may be regarded as the supreme result of material evolution in animals; or at least it may be affirmed that, while man continues to exist, no member of the lower animal tribes can possibly develop to become his rival.