If we descend to the lowest existing savages, however, it is to find this agency almost non-existent. We can perceive in them no organized warfare and no alert conflict with nature. They are as yet at the very beginning of this stage of evolution, and it certainly exerts little influence upon them. Nature is not adverse, life needs little thought or exertion, they accept the world as they find it, without question or revolt, and their thoughts and habits are as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. But the fact that active warfare does not now exist among the lowest tribes of mankind, does not argue that such a state has never existed. In truth, we maintain that primitive man is the outcome of an active and long-continued warfare, and that his settled and sluggish condition to-day is the ease that follows victory. He has conquered and is at rest after his labors.
For if we compare primitive man with the anthropoid apes, it is to find one striking and important difference between them. The anthropoids are at a level in position with their animal neighbors. Man is lord and master of the animal kingdom, the dominant being in the world of life. He has no rival in this lordship, but stands alone in his relation to the animal kingdom. He is feared and avoided by the largest and strongest beasts of field and forest. He does not fight defensively, but offensively, and whatever his relation to his fellow-man, he admits no equal in the world of life below him. He is the only animal that has made a struggle for lordship. The gorilla is said to attack the lion and drive it from its haunts. If it does so, it is not with any desire for mastery, but simply to rid itself of a dangerous neighbor. The battle for dominion has been confined to man, and in the winning of it no small degree of mental development must have taken place.
The supremacy of man was not gained without a struggle, and that a severe and protracted one. The animal kingdom did not yield readily to man's lordship, and the war must have been long and bitter, settled as the relations now seem. Rest has succeeded victory. The lower animals are now submissive to man, or retire before him in dread of his strength and resources, and the strain upon his powers has ceased. So far as this phase of evolution is concerned the influences aiding the mental development of man have lost their strength. The warfare is over, and man reigns supreme over the kingdom of life.