Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/94

74 How it came about is really not difficult to explain. When primitive man began to develop the rudiments of society (the group, or the herd) he did so mainly for self-preservation. In the struggle for existence coordinated numbers gave him a better chance; and giving him a better chance of life, they gave him also a better chance of self-development and self enjoyment. But into that early society man brought not only his social instincts but his predatory instincts as well. And while the group helped him to prey more effectively on those left outside, it did not prevent him from preying in a certain measure on those within. The exceptionally strong man had an exceptional value in his own tribe; and he exacted an exceptional price for it—in wives, or in slaves captured in war, or in the division of the spoil. It was the same, as society developed, with the exceptionally resourceful leader; brain began to count above muscle; and the men of exceptional ability acquired the wealth. And you know perfectly well, without my going further into detail, that out of the price exacted within the community (whose broad interests were in common) separate and conflicting interests arose; the interest which secured political control exacted from all the dependent interests an unfair price for its services; and wherever slavery was an established part of social development, man did not love his neighbour as himself, he only loved him as his chattel.