_.--To this
statement must be added the fact that struggle with {83} his fellows
arose from the attempt to obtain food, and we have practically the
whole occupation of man in a state of savagery. At least, the simple
activities represent the essential forces at the foundation of human
social life. The attempt to preserve life either through instinct,
impulse, emotion, or rational selection is fundamental in all animal
existence. The other great factor at the foundation of human effort is
the desire to perpetuate the species. This, in fact, is the mere
projection of the individual life into the next generation, and is
fundamentally important to the individual and to the race alike. All
modern efforts can be traced to these three fundamental activities.
But in seeking to satisfy the cravings of hunger and to avoid the pain
of cold, man has developed a varied and active life. About these two
centres cluster all the simple forces of human progress. Indeed,
invention and discovery and the advancement of the industrial arts
receive their initial impulses from these economic relations.

We have only to turn our attention to the social life around us to
observe evidences of the great importance of economic factors. Even
now it will be observed that the greater part of economic activities
proceeds from the effort to procure food, clothing, and shelter, while
a relatively smaller part is engaged in the pursuit of education,
culture, and pleasure. The excellence of educational systems, the
highest flights of philosophy, the greatest achievement of art, and the
best inspiration of religion cannot exist without a wholesome economic
life at the foundation. It should not be humiliating to man that this
is so, for in the constitution of things, labor of body and mind, the
struggle for existence and the accumulations of the products of
industry yield a large return in themselves in discipline and culture;
and while we use these economic means to reach higher ideal states,
they represent the ladder on which man makes the first rounds of his
ascent.

_The Methods of Procuring Food in Primitive Times_.--Judging from the
races and tribes that are more nearly in a state of nature than any
other, it may be reasonably assumed that {84} in his first stage of
existence, man subsisted almost wholly upon a vegetable diet, and that
gradually he gave more and more attention to animal food. His
structure and physiology make it possible f