ter and then use. But at first it
assumes place in man wholly untamed and seemingly tameless, indisposed
for aught but sovereignty. Of course, having place in man, it passes,
and in the same crude state, into society. And thus it happens, that,
when the unconquerable affinities of men bring them together, this
principle arises in its brutal might, and strives to make itself central
and supreme.

But what is highest in man has its own inevitable urgency, as well as
what is lowest. It can never be left out of the account. Gravitation
is powerful and perpetual; but the pine pushes up in opposition to it
nevertheless. The forces of the inorganic realm strive with might to
keep their own; but organic life _will_ exist on the planet in their
despite, and will conquer from the earth what material it needs. And, in
like manner, no sooner do men aggregate than there begin to play back
and forth between them ideal or ascending forces, mediations of reason,
conscience, soul; and the ever growing interpretations of these appear
as courtesies, laws, moralities, worships,--as all the noble communities
which constitute a high social state. In fine, there is that in man
which seeks perpetually, for it seeks necessarily, to give the position
of centrality in society to the ideal principle of justice and to the
great charities of the human soul.

Hence a contest. Two antagonistic principles leap forth from the bosom
of man, so soon as men come together, seeking severally to establish
the law of social relationship. One of these is predaceous, brutal; the
other ideal, humane. One says, "Might makes Right"; the other, "Might
should serve Right." One looks upon mankind at large as a harvest to
be gathered for the behoof of a few, who are confederate only for that
purpose, even as wolves hunt in packs; the other regards humanity as
a growth to be fostered for its own sake and worth, and affirms that
superiority of strength is given for service, not for spoil. One makes
the _ego_ supreme; the other makes rational right supreme. One seeks
private gratification at any expense to higher values, even as the tiger
would, were it possible, draw and drink the blood of the universe as
soon as the blood of a cow; the other establishes an ideal estimate
of values, and places private gratification low on the scale. But the
deepest difference between them, the root of separation, remains to
be stated. It is the opposite climate they have of man in the p