46 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



individuals at all, except historically. But in man, 

 none of these things hold. A man can for half his 

 day be the merest cog, subordinate in every detail 

 of his action to the needs of the community, but for 

 the other half be himself, a full and complete indi- 

 viduality, making the community serve his own ends 

 and needs. For him, aggregation does not mean 

 complete and irreversible subordination; his spe- 

 cialization is reversible, and indeed his potentialities 

 as an individual actually increase with the increased 

 individuality of the aggregate to which he belongs. 



Bearing these differences in mind, we may turn to 

 consider how our doctrine of progress helps us in 

 studying humanity. 



At the outset we must guard ourselves against the 

 idea that human society has reached any high level 

 of biological individuation. I may perhaps quote 

 from what I have written elsewhere: "If we were 

 to draw a parallel between primitive types of society 

 and some primitive mammal such as a duck-billed 

 platypus, and to compare the course which we hope 

 society will in time accomplish with what has been 

 accomplished in the progress of the mammalian type 

 from a creature resembling the platypus up to man, 

 with what creature should we have to compare the 

 existing state of human communities? I venture 

 to say that we should be flattering ourselves if we 

 were to fix upon the dog." 



Then we must remember that Natural Selection 

 in man has fallen chiefly upon groups, not upon 



