BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 77 



Man is obviously and undoubtedly an organism of 

 the same general nature as other organisms. He 

 possesses the same general system of organs, 

 working 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 

 detailed 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 organization 

 he is unique. All detailed comparisons between 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 organization of their com- 

 munities 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 associated 

 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 compris- 

 ing special symbols for particular external objects. 



