spring are continuous in nature with their parents; the family has a unity though its members be discontinuous and scattered; "the race is one and the individual many.”

9. Advantages of Social Life.—But animals are social, not only because they love one another, but also because sociality is justified of her children. "The world is the abode of the strong," but it is also the home of the loving; " contention is the vital force," but the struggle is modified and ennobled by sociality.

(a) Darwin's Position. Darwin observed that "the individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would best escape various dangers; while those that cared least for their comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers." He distinctly emphasised that the phrase "the struggle for existence was to be used in a wide and metaphorical sense-to include all the endeavours which animals make both selfishly and unselfishly to strengthen their foothold and that of their offspring. But he was not always successful in retaining this broad view, nor was he led to compute with sufficient care to what extent mutual aid is a factor in evolution counteractive of individualistic struggle.

Without losing sight of the reality of the struggle for existence; without disputing the importance of natural selection as a condition of evolution-securing that the relatively fittest changes succeed; without ignoring what seems almost a truism, that love and social sympathies have also been fostered in the course of natural selection; we maintain—(1) that many of the greatest steps of progress --such as those involved in the existence of many-celled animals, loving mates, family life, mammalian motherhood, and societies-were not made by the natural selection of indefinite variations; (2) that affection, co-operation, mutual helpfulness, sociality, have modified the struggle for material subsistence by lessening its intensity and by ennobling its character.

(b) Kropotkine's Position.—Against Prof. Huxley's conclusion that "Life was a continual free-fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family the

Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence," let me place that of Kropotkine, to whose admirable discussion of mutual aid among animals I again acknowledge my indebtedness.

"Life in societies is no exception in the animal world. It is the rule, the law of nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher Vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited. . . . Life in societies enables the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy, and to maintain its numbers, albeit with a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunning, and endurance of hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace as so many qualities making the individual or the species the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. . . . The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly by favouring the growth of intelligence. Therefore combine-practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress-bodily, intellectual, and moral. That is what nature teaches us."

10. A Note on "The Social Organism."-It is common nowadays to speak of society as "the social organism," and the metaphor is not only suggestive but convenient -suggestive because it is profitable to biologist and sociologist alike to follow out the analogies between an organism and society, convenient because there is among organisms -in aggregates like sponges, in perfected integrates like birds-a variety sufficient to meet all grades and views of society, and because biologists differ almost as much in

their conceptions of an "organism" as sociologists do in regard to "society."

It may be questioned, however, whether we need any other designation for society than the word society supplies, and whether the biological metaphor, with physical associations still clinging to it, is not more illusory than helpful. For the true analogy is not between society and an individual organism, but between human society and those incipient societies which were before man was. Human society is, or ought to be, an integrate-a spiritual integrate —of organisms, of which the bee-hive and the ants' nest, the community of beavers and the company of monkeys, are like far-off prophecies. And in these, as in our own societies, the modern conception of heredity leads us to recognise that there is a very real unity even between members physically discontinuous.

The peculiarity of human society, as distinguished from animal societies, depends mainly on the fact that man is a social person, and knows himself as such. Man is the realisation of antecedent societies, and it is man's realisation of himself as a social person which makes human society what it is, and gives us a promise of what it will be. As biologists, and perhaps as philosophers, we are led to conclude that man is determined by that whole of which he is a part, and yet that his life is social freedom; that society is the means of his development, and at the same time its end ; that man has to some extent realised himself in society, and that society has been to some extent realised in man.

But I am slow to suppose that we, who in our ignorance and lack of coherence are like the humbler cells of a great body, have any adequate conception of the social organism of which we form part.

II. Conclusions. -I would in the main agree with Kropotkine that “sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle"; with Espinas that "Le milieu social est la condition nécessaire de la conservation et du renouvellement de la vie"; and with Rousseau that "man did not make society, but society made man."

CHAPTER VI

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF ANIMALS

1. The Love of Mates—2. Love and Care for Offspring

WINTER in our northern climate sets a spell upon life. The migrant birds escape from it, but most living things have to remain spell-bound, some hiding with the supreme patience of animals, others slumbering peacefully, others in a state of "latent life" stranger than death. But within the hard rind of the trees, or lapped round by bud scales, or imprisoned within the husks of buried seeds, the life of plants is ready to spring forth when the south wind blows; beneath the snow lie the caterpillars of summer butterflies, the frogs are waiting in the mud of the pond, the hedgehog curled up sleeps soundly, and everywhere, under the seeming death, life rests until the spring. "For the coming of Ormuzd, the Light and Life Bringer, the leaf slept folded, the butterfly was hidden, the germ concealed, while the sun swept upwards towards Aries."

But when spring does come, heralded by returning migrants-swallows and cuckoos among the rest-how marvellous is the reawakening! The buds swell and burst, the corn sends up its light green shoots, the primrose and celandine are in blossom, the mother humble-bee comes out from her hiding-place and booms towards the willow catkins, the frogs croak and pair, none the worse of their fast, the rooks caw noisily, and the cooing of the dove is. heard from the wood. Then, as the pale flowers are suc

ceeded by those of brighter tints, as the snowy hawthorn gives place to the laburnum's " dropping wells of fire "and the bloom of the lilac, the butterflies flit in the sunshine, the chorus of birds grows stronger, and the lambs bleat in the valley. Temperature rises, colours brighten, life becomes strong and lusty, and the earth is filled with love.

1. The Love of Mates.-In human life one of the most complex musical chords is the love of mates, in the higher forms of which we distinguish three notesphysical, emotional, and intellectual attraction. The love of animals, however, we can only roughly gauge by analogy; our knowledge is not sure enough to appreciate it justly, though we know beyond any doubt that in many the physical fondness of one sex for another is sublimed by the addition of subtler emotional sympathies. Among mammals, which frequently pair in spring, the males are often transformed by passion, the "timid" håre becomes an excited combatant with his rivals, while in the beasts of prey love often proves itself stronger than hunger. There is much ferocity in mammalian courtship-savage jealousy of rivals, mortal struggles between them, and success in wooing to the strongest. In many cases the lovemaking is like a storm-violent but passing. The animals pair and separate-the females to motherhood, the males to their ordinary life. A few, like some small antelopes, seem to remain as mates from year to year; many monkeys are said to be monogamous; but this is not the way of the majority.

Birds are more emotional than mammals, and their lovemaking is more refined. The males are almost always more decorative than their mates, and excel in the power of song. They may sing, it is true, from sheer gladness of heart, from a genuine joy of life, and their lay rises "like the sap in the bough"; but the main motive of their music is certainly love. It may not always be music to us, but it is sweet to the ears for which it is meant-to which in many tones the song says ever Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" Nor do the male birds woo by singing alone, but by love dances and by fluttering displays