Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/211

 THE IRKSOMENESS OF LABOR 193

thinking and feeling. Like other species, man is a creature of habits and propensities. He acts under the guidance of pro- pensities which have been imposed upon him by the process of selection to which he owes his differentiation from other species. He is a social animal ; and the selective process whereby he has acquired the spiritual make-up of a social animal has at the same time made him substantially a peaceful animal. The race may have wandered far from the ancient position of peacefulness, but even now the traces of a peaceful trend in men's everyday habits of thought and feeling are plain enough. The sight of blood and the presence of death, even of the blood or death of the lower animals, commonly strike inexperienced persons with a sickening revulsion. In the common run of cases, the habit of complacency with slaughter comes only as the result of dis- cipline. In this respect man differs from the beasts of prey. He differs, of course, most widely in this respect from the solitary beasts, but even among the gregarious animals his nearest spiritual relatives are not found among the carnivora. In his unarmed frame and in the slight degree to which his muscular force is specialized for fighting, as well as in his instinctive aver- sion to hostile contact with the ferocious beasts, man is to be classed with those animals that owe their survival to an aptitude for avoiding direct conflict with their competitors, rather than with those which survive by virtue of overcoming and eating their rivals.

" Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all livingthings," and, according to the Law of the Jungle, it is his part to take advice and contrive and turn divers things to account in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest. Without tools he is not a dangerous animal, as animals go. And he did not become a for- midable animal until he had made some considerable advance in the contrivance of implements for combat. In the days before tools had been brought into effective use — that is to say, during by far the greater part of the period of human evolution — man could not be primarily an agent of destruction or a disturber of the peace. He was of a peaceable and retiring disposition by force of circumstances. With the use of tools the possibility of