Cooperative System Amongst Lower Animals 789 



transmission does not explain the origin of such acts. This 

 we must look for in what follows. 



Environal action and proenvironal reaction play, the writer 

 believes, a fundamentally important part in the evolution of 

 social organization. Whether it be a bee, an ant, a beaver, 

 or a primitive man, each by aid of sense impressions from 

 without quickly learns, and slowly records on the nerve mechan- 

 ism, the fact that the united efforts of two or more can accom- 

 plish what one alone would entirely fail to do. Thus, when 

 one watches the transportation of a dead bee or other large 

 insect by four to six ants, and notes how each of the latter 

 changes position and the direction of push or pull, so as to 

 bear the bee rapidly along against obstacles, he at once ap- 

 preciates that this has become a wonted act in which feeding 

 of the mass of young ones, well-being of the colony, rapid secur- 

 ing of the food by the colony against surrounding competitors, 

 as well as other considerations, are all concerned. So, what 

 once was a rather fortuitous act, in which each of several ants 

 responded to a chemotactic food stimulus, and hauled the 

 booty to a common nest rather than permit it to be carried 

 off to another, becomes by repetition and related brain stimu- 

 lation a registered tendency of the organism. Alike for the 

 individual ant and for the social colony the socialistic act is 

 beneficial. The environmental food-stimulus, the large size of 

 the body, the environal competition started by ants of other 

 colonies, and the difficulty of transport are responded to by 

 the united acts of the cooperating ants. 



But in all social evolution the law of proenvironment plays 

 the most important part. We have already showm how it 

 operates from the more individualistic standpoint (p. 636). 

 It seems to become a hastened and condensedly active agent 

 where two or more organisms are concerned. And here sexual 

 reproduction is involved. For — absent in the very simplest 

 asexual organisms — sex fusion is a proenvironal act, while 

 amongst the higher invertebrates and vertebrates the social, 

 sympathetic, and correlated acts connected with reproduction 

 and perpetuation of the species do not need emphasis. The 



