It is self-evident that those who want
anything have a much better chance of getting it if they join together
in order to demand it, or to work for it. Like one or two other simple
laws of human nature, this, though the simplest, is the hardest to get
people to understand and to accept. Nothing is so difficult as to
persuade people to trust each other, even to the extent of standing
together and sticking together and working together in order to get
what they want.
The first association of men was forced upon them for protection, I
wonder how many ages--hundreds of thousands of years--it took to teach
men to join together in order to protect themselves against
starvation, wild beasts, and each other. The necessity of
self-preservation first made men associate, and changed hunters into
soldiers, and turned the whole world into a camp. It was war, which
brought men together; it was war which taught men the necessity of
order, discipline, and obedience; without the necessity for fighting,
without the military spirit, no association at all would now be
possible. A vast number of men practically use modern safety at this
day for the purpose of being fighters, every man against his
neighbour. Just as no one would, even now, do any work but for the
necessity of finding food for himself and his family, so no one would
ever have begun to stand side by side with his neighbour but for the
absolute certainty that he would be killed if he did not.
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