We, too, approaching the subject from a different point of view, have
been led to see how desirable it is that self-governing groups of men
should be enabled to work together in permanent harmony and on a great
scale. In this kind of political integration the work of civilization
very largely consists. We have seen how in its most primitive form
political society is made up of small self-governing groups that are
perpetually at war with one another. Now the process of change which we
call civilization means quite a number of things. But there is no doubt
that on its political side it means primarily the gradual substitution
of a state of peace for a state of war. This change is the condition
precedent for all the other kinds of improvement that are connoted by
such a term as "civilization." Manifestly the development of industry is
largely dependent upon the cessation or restriction of warfare; and
furthermore, as the industrial phase of civilization slowly supplants
the military phase, men's characters undergo, though very slowly, a
corresponding change. Men become less inclined to destroy life or to
inflict pain; or--to use the popular terminology which happens here to
coincide precisely with that of the Doctrine of Evolution--they become
less _brutal_ and more _humane_. Obviously then the prime feature of the
process called civilization is the general diminution of warfare. But we
have seen that a general diminution of warfare is rendered possible only
by the union of small political groups into larger groups that are kept
together by community of interests, and that can adjust their mutual
relations by legal discussion without coming to blows. In the preceding
lecture we considered this process of political integration as variously
exemplified by communities of Hellenic, of Roman, and of Teutonic race,
and we saw how manifold were the difficulties which the process had to
encounter. We saw how the Teutons--at least in Switzerland, England, and
America--had succeeded best through the retention of local
self-government combined with central representation. We saw how the