This phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history. Before its advent man had no history. It would be as useful to attempt to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his progress. History is the record of individuality, and in primitive times equality and communism prevailed, and the individual had not yet separated himself from the mass. Man had settled into the dull inertness of a stagnant pool, and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. There must be leaders before there can be history; the annals of mankind begin in hero worship; the relations of superior and inferior need to be established; and individual action and supremacy are the foundations upon which all history is built. Only by stirring up the deep pool of human life into seething turmoil and unrest could the tendency to stagnation be overcome, the best and most aspiring rising to the top, the dull and heavy sinking to the bottom, and the element of thought permeating the whole with its vitalizing spirit.
When this phase of evolution is reached, we cease for the first time to deal with species and genera in the mass and begin to deal with individuals, who now emerge from the general group and stand above and apart like great signal posts on the highway of progress. These heroes are not alone those of the sword. They are the leaders in art, in literature, in science, in thought, in every domain; the men who stand, above, supreme and shining, and toward whose elevation the whole mass below surges slowly but strenuously upward. The third phase of human evolution, therefore, is that of the emergence of the individual as the leader, lawgiver, teacher of mankind, each leader forming a goal for the emulation of all below. And this condition is the legitimate outcome of war, which, terrible as it always has been, was the only agency that could rapidly break up the stagnancy of early communism and send man upward in a swirl toward the heights of civilization.
To give the history of this phase of evolution would be to give the history of mankind, and would be aside from the purpose of this work. All that need be attempted, in support of our argument, is to present some general deductions from human history, indicating the leading features of the service man has received from war.