Man's Place in Nature 203 



of ethical. Yet we all know of many who can 

 transform their dreary " day's darg" into a dis- 

 cipline of nobility thus raising it higher than its 

 own poor merits do above the daily activity of that 

 exemplar of our childhood the busy bee. On the 

 other hand, the bees are perhaps happier, till the 

 winter of their discontent draws near; they may be 

 troubled with parasites, but not with ideals. As 

 Walt Whitman said so truly of animals in gen- 

 eral " They do not sweat and whine about their 

 condition; they do not lie awake in the dark and 

 weep for their sins; they do not make me sick 

 discussing their duty not one is respectable or 

 unhappy in the whole world." 



As we study animal life we see a gradual emer- 

 gence of the fundamental springs of conduct which 

 we find transmuted of course in ourselves. 

 Starting with the simple protoplasts, responsive 

 to oxygen, warmth, food, and one another, and 

 also exhibiting in some cases a selective behaviour 

 which we cannot redescribe in physical and chem- 

 ical terms, we can hypothetically trace the evo- 

 lution of behaviour. Very important steps were 

 the formation of a "body" of which death was 

 the price, the beginning of bilateral symmetry, the 

 consequent acquisition of head brains, the differ- 

 entiation of the sexes. From the stages now per- 

 sistent at different grades of the animal kingdom, 

 we infer that from a primary hunger there arose 



