The Unit of Survival is the Human Race

Abstract

Throughout at least five hundred million years of biological evolution, there has been a paradox in that both social togetherness and aggressive combat have had survival value for the species. Individual animals, especially males, and rival groups and colonies of animals — invertebrates, fishes, birds and mammals — fight over territory. Man’s wars have also been over territory — not only geographical and economic, but ideological too. Konrad Lorenz has called man an unusually quarrelsome ape. He has facetiously remarked that man appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings. Man has evolved beyond individual combat but not yet beyond combat between groups and nations.