compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest.
Civilisation begins, because the beginning of civilisation is a
military advantage. Probably if we had historic records of the ante-
historic ages--if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts
and actions of men ages before they could set them down for
themselves--we should know that this first step in civilisation was
the hardest step. But when we come to history as it is, we are more
struck with the difficulty of the next step. All the absolutely
incoherent men--all the 'Cyclopes'--have been cleared away long
before there was an authentic account of them. And the least
coherent only remain in the 'protected' parts of the world, as we
may call them. Ordinary civilisation begins near the Mediterranean
Sea; the best, doubtless, of the ante-historic civilisations were
not far off. From this centre the conquering SWARM--for such it is--
has grown and grown; has widened its subject territories steadily,
though not equably, age by age. But geography long defied it. An
Atlantic Ocean, a Pacific Ocean, an Australian Ocean, an
unapproachable interior Africa, an inaccessible and undesirable hill
India, were beyond its range. In such remote places there was no
real competition, and on them inferior, half-combined men continued
to exist. But in the regions of rivalry--the regions where the
better man pressed upon the worse man--such half-made associations
could not last. They died out and history did not begin till after
they were gone. The great difficulty which history records is not
that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most
evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting
out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I
phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom;
not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through
it, and reaching something better.