ng the action of
natural selection, maintain that earlier evolutionists have made nature
much too red in tooth and claw. Dr. Russel Wallace from one motive, and
Prince Krapotkin from another, have insisted that the triumphs of
war have been exaggerated, and the triumphs of peace, or of social
co-operation, far too little appreciated. It will be found that such
writers usually base their theory on life as we find it in nature
to-day, where the social principle is highly developed in many groups
of animals. This is most misleading, since social co-operation among
animals, as an instrument of progress, is (geologically speaking) quite
a recent phenomenon. Nearly every group of animals in which it is found
belongs, to put it moderately, to the last tenth of the story of life,
and in some of the chief instances the animals have only gradually
developed social life. [*] The first nine-tenths of the chronicle of
evolution contain no indication of social life, except--curiously
enough--in such groups as the Sponges, Corals, and Bryozoa, which are
amongst the least progressive in nature. We have seen plainly that
during the overwhelmingly greater part of the story of life the
predominant agencies of evolution were struggle against adverse
conditions and devouring carnivores; and we shall find them the
predominant agencies throughout the Tertiary Era.

* Thus the social nature of man is sometimes quoted as one
of the chief causes of his development. It is true that it
has much to do with his later development, but we shall see
that the statement that man was from the start a social
being is not at all warranted by the facts. On the other
hand, it may be pointed out that the ants and termites had
appeared in the Mesozoic. We shall see some evidence that
the remarkable division of labour which now characterises
their life did not begin until a much later period, so that
we have no evidence of social life in the early stages.

Yet we must protest against the exaggerated estimate of the conscious
pain which so many read into these millions of years of struggle.
Probably there was no consciousness at all during the greater part
of the time. The wriggling of the worm on which you have accidentally
trodden is no proof whatever that you have caused conscious pain. The
nervous system of an animal has been so evolved as to respond with great
disturbance of its tissue to any dangerous or