BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 79 



lower relatives, a creature not only unique but dis- 

 parate. 



Man is obviously and undoubtedly an organism 

 of the same general nature as other organisms. He 

 possesses the same general system of organs, work- 

 ing in the same way as a dog, a horse, a bird, a 

 crocodile, or a frog; he passes through the same type 

 of developmental cycle; he is built on the same de- 

 tailed plan as other mammals; and numerous in- 

 dications betray his descent from a particular branch 

 of the mammalian stock. 



But in his mode of life and type of social organ- 

 ization he is unique. All detailed comparisons be- 

 tween the communities of man and those of bees and 

 ants are as unprofitable in the working-out as they 

 are easy in the making. It is futile to direct the 

 sluggard or any other human being to the ant, since 

 the whole physical and psychical construction of 

 ants is different from that of man, the whole organ- 

 ization of their communities from that of his. 



His mode of life is unique because his psycho- 

 neural mechanism is built on a new plan, new modes 

 of connection between parts of the brain being as- 

 sociated with new possibilities of mind. Let us 

 briefly run over the biologically most important 

 points in which he differs from the lower organisms. 



In the first place, he is capable of speech, and 

 possesses a true language — not a mere repertory of 

 sounds or signs associated with different states of 

 mind, as in some higher organisms, but a language 



