The Struggle for Existence

In the strict sense of the word "Nature," it denotes the sum of the phenomenal
world, of that which has been, and is, and will be; and society, like art, is
therefore a part of Nature. But it is convenient to distinguish those parts of
Nature in which man plays the part of immediate cause, as something apart;
and, therefore, society, like art, is usefully to be considered as distinct
from Nature. It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this
distinction, since society differs from Nature in having a definite moral
object; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man—the
member of society or citizen—necessarily runs counter to that which the non-
ethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal
kingdom—tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to
the bitter end, like any other animal; the former devotes his best energies to
the object of setting limits to the struggle.

In the cycle of phenomena presented by the life of man, the animal, no more
moral end is discernible than in that presented by the lives of the wolf and
of the deer. However imperfect the relics of prehistoric men may be, the
evidence which they afford clearly tends to the conclusion that, for thousands
and thousands of years, before the orgin of the oldest known civilizations,
men were savages of a very low type. They strove with their enemies and their
competitors; they preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than themselves;
they were born, multiplied without stint, and died, for thousands of
generations, alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and the hyena, whose
lives were spent in the same way; and they were no more to be praised or
blamed, on moral grounds, than their less erect and more hairy compatriots...