develop. The murder that comes from passion and feeling implies
situations and circumstances that are rarely strong enough to overcome
the restrictions against killing.




XIII

MAN AS A PREDATORY ANIMAL


Not less than eighty per cent of all crimes are property crimes, and it
seems probable that, of the rest, most arise from the same motives. If
we look at civilization as the result of that seesaw trend of the race
from "Naturalism to Artificialism," we may get a flexible view of life
that will be in accordance with the facts, and will help us to get rid
of the arbitrary division of man's history into the three periods termed
Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization. However desirable this division
may be for historic purposes in general, it is only confusing in an
effort to study the nature of man.

In the life and origin of the race, the fact is always evidenced that
the Ego through its growth and persistence is always drawing to itself
from the current of environment all things which it feels desirable to
its life and growth. This must be a necessary condition of survival. In
the long journey from amoeba to man, any circumstance causing a complete
halt for even a brief period meant extinction, while even a persistent
interference produced a weakened organism, if not an arrest of
development.