Note 29 — Chapter I · PURPOSE AND METHOD

The outright degeneration assumed by Le Maistre need not come into the account. Human progress is now conceded to be a resultant of opposing forces of growth and decay. Mr. Talcott Williams has an interesting paper, “Was Primitive Man a Modern Savage?” in the Report of the Smithsonian Inst., 1896, pp. 541 ff. His main point is, that the modern savage has deteriorated under pressure. Primitive man was in a more or less “empty earth,” and was not crowded by his fellows. The god of war is always a junior member of Olympus. So, too, Professor Baldwin (Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 214) argues for a reign of peace, a “sort of organic resting-place,” in the child’s second period, which answers to social coöperation, “the rest which man took after his release from the animal.... The social tide then sets in. The quest of domestic union and reciprocal service comes to comfort him, and his nomadic and agricultural habits are formed.” One is reminded of Scherer’s argument for an epoch of peace in early Germanic culture attested by names which bear that stamp as compared with the later and warlike Gerhards, Gertrudes, and the rest.