Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/654

636 are injustice, bitterness, and rancor. Upon this law does the development of society depend, and in the aggressive forces are found the elements of progress, while in the submitting and resisting forces are found the elements of stability. To the aggressive features of Western civilizations is due that rapid progress which has heretofore proved wanting in stability, while to the well-defined social conditions of Eastern caste is due the stability of the civilizations of the Orient, which have for ages lacked the elements of progress. Science formulates the theory, but not until taught by bitter experience does man seem to understand that by union and interaction we secure a resultant equal to the sum of our several activities, while by conflict and counteraction forces are neutralized, or at best the resultant can be no greater than the difference between the several effects.

The lowest races respect the rights of property among themselves. Mr. Darwin says of the Fuegians: "If any present was designed for one canoe, and it fell near another, it was invariably given to the right owner." It goes without saying that from the docks of one of our populous cities, in the midst of civilization, no such respect for the rights of others would be observed. But, in the state of ungovernable passion which characterizes the savage, is it not evident that a disregard of the personal rights of others would soon end in practical extermination, while by respecting the rights of others each gains security for his own?

It is idle to speculate as to the occasion of this nascent trust or confidence on which all societies rest alike in their infancy of ungovernable violence and in the maturer developments of the restraints and social order of our present civilization. It is true the stinted trusts of the undeveloped limit the duties they create, while the extended trusts of the more evolved imply the creation of new duties coextensive with those trusts.

Let us, for illustration, suppose that two savages, in pursuit of the same game, cross paths; immediately they turn upon each other; being evenly matched, neither gains the advantage, but the game escapes, their activities being lost in the attempt to thwart each other. With frequent repetitions they ultimately realize that to work with is more profitable than to work against each other, and the first step toward civilization has been taken.

It is reasonable to suppose that the first associations of men were intermittent and capricious, the bond of union being often severed at the will of either as personal advantage seemed to dictate, and that the discernment of the permanent blessings of social union was of slow and uncertain growth, and not until a long period had elapsed would the trust of either be so complete as to make treachery possible; for this augmenting trust is of mutual growth or dissolution, the former removing fears and stimulating