THE PRINCIPLE OF CO-OPERATION 355 



living would occur one after the other in the same micro-niche, with 

 a successive conditioning and a progressively greater longevity of 

 some or all of the particles, until finally conditions would become 

 sufficiently favorable for permanent survival. Whatever the details, 

 it seems probable that this mechanism was operative from the very 

 beginning of Hfe and is a fundamental trait or property of Hving 

 matter. 



In order to discuss this trait more easily, it should be named. A few 

 years ago it might have been called "unconscious co-operation"; but 

 since many modern psychologists have discarded the concept of con- 

 sciousness, the idea of lack of consciousness is less helpful than form- 

 erly. It may be regarded as an automatic mutual interdependence 

 among organisms, or, for the sake of simpHcity, as the principle of 

 co-operation. The only trouble with calling this relationship one of 

 co-operation, which it is, lies in the fact that the word carries with 

 it an idea of conscious effort (cf. Durkheim, 1922) possible only 

 after long ages of organic evolution, and then only in certain favored 

 types of animals, while the evidence appears to be clear that the 

 sort of co-operation of which we are speaking is a fundamental trait 

 of living matter. As in all the other fundamental properties of living 

 organisms, there is probably no hard and fast line to be drawn here 

 between the living and the non-living. The mutual interdependence 

 of the living must have grown out of similar but simpler interde- 

 pendence in antecedent non-living matter, and may, in fact, be 

 merely a highly specialized biological application of the mass law of 

 chemistry. 



If this analysis be sound, as it appears to be, the potentiality of 

 social life is inherent in Hving matter, even though its first manifes- 

 tations are merely those of a slight mutual interdependence, or 

 of an automatic co-operation which finds its first biological expres- 

 sion as a subtle binding link of primitive ecological biocoenoses. Lest 

 we be accused of having been carried too far by enthusiasm, it may 

 be well to pause for a moment to examine the extent to which this 

 automatic co-operation has been demonstrated to exist among ani- 

 mals. Are we, in fact, deahng with a phenomenon known to be 

 sufficiently widespread to be thought of as having general rather 



