a gigantic scale, and man's architectural works, rude in design but well
adapted for shelter and protection, were proportioned to his own stature
and rivaled the everlasting hills in size and solidity. And they needed
something substantial for protection, for war was their business and their
pass time. They lived for nothing but to fight. It was brother against
brother, neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe; and the man who
could not fight, and fight hard, had no excuse for living. War was not an
art, but a natural outburst of brutal instincts. A giant glories in his
strength and cultivates it as naturally as a bird its song. But it is
pleasant to consider the fact that as man's mental and moral qualities
have developed his body has become smaller. As the necessity for that
immense physical strength gradually passed away, nature, abhorring such
unnecessary waste of material, applied to us her inexorable laws whereby a
thing or a state of things no longer useful slowly fades away, and our
bodies accommodated themselves to new conditions.

"But in those early times men needed great physical strength and long life
to bring the world into subjection, and until that was done they could
give little attention to the cultivation of the finer qualities of their
incipient manhood. They were handicapped by the fact that the lower
animals had had the earth to themselves a few million years, more or less,
and no puny race could ever have driven them to the wall.

"At length, when the conflict was well nigh over, with victory in sight,
men had abandoned the struggle and were using all their fierce strength in
fighting each other. This had been going on so long and with such deadly
results that it seemed as if the race must be exterminated unless some
superior power could step in from the outside and prevent it.

"We can easily understand that there was no such thing as science then.