BIOLOGY AND ETHICS. 673 



is discernible ; antagonism is converted into co-operation and 

 conflict gives place to harmony, and the higher we ascend in the 

 scale of being the more far-reaching and complicated does co- 

 operation become. Individualism is gradually subordinated to 

 collectivism, and the struggle for existence becomes mainly the 

 concern of the organism as a whole and is only in a minor degree 

 that of the units of which it is composed. Growth, form, and 

 structure are regulated by an organic process only very slightly 

 modified by external conditions and not at all by the selection 

 of the fittest among the growing, formative, and tissue-making 

 parts. " In each of these complicated structures," says Huxley, 

 in referring to the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit of a 

 bean, "as in their smallest constituents, there is an immanent 

 energy which in harmony with that resident in all the others in- 

 cessantly works toward the maintenance of the whole and the 

 efficient performance of the part it has to play in the economy of 

 Nature." In a higher animal we have untold millions of cells of 

 widely different constitution and habits, not merely dwelling 

 together in amity but co-operating for the good of the system in 

 which they are incorporated and undergoing harmonious and 

 efficacious metamorphoses as it unfolds. The system is still en- 

 gaged in the struggle for existence, but its constituents can not 

 in any true sense be said to be so on their own account. Their 

 self-assertion is limited by the organic process, or what would at 

 one time have been called the law of design, the equilibrium and 

 comity of tissues being secured by a self-restraint that is inherent 

 in them, that was inherent in the vital impulse that called them 

 into being, a restraint on the nutrition and reproduction of each 

 to secure the nutrition and reproduction of all, a restraint that 

 when from any cause it is broken down leads to disease, as in the 

 overgrowth of cancer. And, as in the case of the cell, so in that 

 of the animal, the moment we get beyond the solitary animal 

 fighting for its own life, mutual obligation or consensus becomes 

 apparent, for if two animals combine to fight together there must 

 be a tacit understanding that they are to forbear from fighting 

 each other while so engaged. In all associations of animals the 

 association which is useful to them in their struggle for existence 

 is only maintained by some curtailment of the self-assertion that 

 is of the very essence of the struggle. Sheer animalism is to some 

 extent restained, antagonism for certain purposes is merged in 

 co-operation, and individualism is modified in its manifestations 

 by self-denial. In the ant-hill and beehive and among all state- 

 forming insects may be observed an orderly polity involving the 

 co-operation of different classes which exist not for their own 

 advantage but because they are of value to the state and have 

 given it a superiority over differently constituted colonies, and in 



VOL, XLIV. 51 



