But if we read Darwin's _Descent of Man_ and Prince Kropotkin's _Mutual Aid Among Animals_ and Winwood Reade's _Martyrdom of Man_, we shall find that the law of natural selection does not favour any such horrible conclusions. Self-preservation may be the first law of nature; but it is not the last law of nature. In union is strength. The gregarious animals--those which live in communities of flocks and herds--as the apes, the deer, the rooks, the bees, the bison, the swallows, and the wolves, gain by mutual aid in the struggle for existence, for, by reason of their numbers and their union, they are better able to watch for the approach and to defeat the attacks of their enemies. From this union and mutual aid of the gregarious animals arose the social instincts. The sociable animals would doubtless be first drawn together partly for safety and partly for company. Sheep, deer, buffalo, wild dogs, ants, rooks, and other social animals enjoy the companionship of their own kind. They play together, feed together, sleep together, hunt together, and help each other to evade or resist their common foes. They share in social pleasures, and practise some of the social virtues. And as the more sociable animals would be safest, and the less sociable animals most exposed to danger, natural selection would tend to raise the level of sociability, because the stock would be bred more from sociable than from unsociable animals. The apes are social animals, and also imitative animals. The ape-like forbears of man would unite for safety and for society, and, being imitative, would observe and copy any invention or discovery due to lucky accident or to the sharper wits amongst their number. Like the lower animals, they would play together, feed together, fight in companies, defend or rescue their young, and post sentinels to watch for the approach of danger. Long before man had thought of any ghost or God, some rude form of order and morality would exist in the families and tribes of men, as some rude form of order and morality exists to-day amongst the wild elephants, the bees, the deer, and other creatures. I once saw two horses fighting in a field. A third and older horse came up and parted them, and then drove them away in opposite directions. So in the earliest human tribes would the leaders prevent brawling and exact obedience. Partly from such action, and partly from the training of the young, would be formed the habit of resenting and of punishing certain unsocial acts which the herd or tribe felt to be opposed to the general welfare. One of the first faults man would brand as immoral would be cowardice. One of the earliest moral laws would, perhaps, resemble the Viking law that men who proved cowards in battle should be buried in the swamp under a hurdle.