government lead to greater social solidarity and higher biological efficiency.  Thus unchecked individualism is just as wrong ethically and biologically among men as it would be in the case of insect communities, as pointed out in the preceding chapter; no one has a right to expect service or deference to personal interest from others if he fails to work for them and for the good of all.  It is true that the social structure will stand a great amount of tension, but if this becomes too great, either a readjustment is effected, as when King John was forced by the barons to concede their rights, or else the whole nation suffers, owing to the selfishness of a few.  In the war between Russia and Japan, the latter won because the individual soldier merged his individuality in the larger mechanism of the regiment and brigade and army corps, gladly sacrificing his life for the nation represented by the person of its Emperor.  The single Russian soldier may have been far superior to a Japanese in muscular strength, and perhaps in arms also, but selfishness and greed on the part of many who were responsible for the organization and equipment of the Russian armies rendered the whole fighting machine less coherent and therefore less efficient than that of the Japanese.

In the evolution of ethics the recognition of ideals of conduct has followed long after the institution of a particular precept by nature, which is obeyed instinctively and mechanically by force of inheritance.  In the case of the communities of insects, the results are the same as though the individual animal fully recognized the value of concerted endeavor.  So among primitive savages of to-day there is only a vague conception of abstract duty as such, or it may be practically lacking, as in the case of the Fuegians.  So also a growing child is substantially egoistic, and it must be taught by precept and example that the rights of others can be safeguarded only by the altruistic correction of personal action, long before the child can grasp the higher conceptions of ethics.  If a human being never learns to do so, and becomes a criminal through force of heredity or circumstances, the machinery of the law automatically comes into operation to conserve the welfare of the community.  Such a criminal may be unable to control his destiny, and may not be responsible for being what he is, but nevertheless he must pay the penalty for his unsocial heritage by suffering elimination.

Ethical systems are built around man’s vague recognition of certain natural obligations, and they have thus become more or less complex, and more or less varied as worked out by different peoples.  They must necessarily be much concerned with social questions, with morals in the usual sense and the more rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements.  Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage