“We have observed the origin of the social cleavage into upper and lower strata on this general basis at the inception of social development. If we scrutinize the field carefully, it is evident that one of the greatest and far reaching facts of ancient civilization, as it emerges from the darkness of prehistoric times, as well as one of the most considerable facts of subsequent history is just this cleavage into two principal classes.”
Herbert Spencer has written:[[346]]
“The sequence of slavery upon war in ancient times is shown us in the chronicle of all races....
“Ready obedience to a terrestrial ruler is naturally accompanied by ready obedience to a supposed celestial ruler; ... Examination discloses a relation between ecclesiastical and political governments ... and in societies which have developed a highly coercive secular rule there habitually exists a high coercive religious rule....
“The Clergy were not the men who urged the abolition of slavery, nor the men who condemned regulations which raised the price of bread to maintain rents. Ministers of religion do not as a body denounce the unjust aggression we continually commit on weaker societies.”
Dr. Ward writes:[[347]]
“Passing over robbery and theft, which, though prevalent everywhere, are not recognized by society, let us consider war for a moment as a non-industrial mode of acquisition. In modern times, most wars have some pretext besides that of aggrandizing the victorious parties engaged in them, although in nearly all cases this latter is the real casus belli [justification of war]. This shows that the world is so far advanced as to be ashamed of its motives for its conduct, but not enough so to affect that conduct materially. In olden times no secret was made of the object of military expeditions as the acquisition of the wealth of the conquered people.... We may regard war, then, strictly considered, as a mode of acquisition.... War, then, when waged for conquest, is simply robbery on so large a scale that in the crude conceptions of men it arouses the sentiments of honor.”
In Dealy and Ward’s Text Book of Sociology, pp. 86–88, is this luminous passage:
“The stage of race antagonism is reached and the era of war begins. The chase for animal food is converted into a chase for human flesh, and anthropophagous [cannibal] races arise, spreading terror in all directions.... The use of the bodies of the weaker races for food was, of course, the simplest form of exploitation to suggest itself. But this stage was succeeded by that social assimilation through conquest and subjugation. The profound inequality produced by subjugation was turned to account through other forms of exploitation. The women and the warriors were enslaved, and the system of caste that arose converted the conquered race into a virtually servile class, while this service and the exemptions it entailed converted the leaders of the conquering race into a leisure class.
“Such was the origin of slavery, an economic institution which is found in the earlier stages of all the historical races.”