88 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



with the resultant, the" main direction of organic 

 evolution. There are no ideals, there is no purpose, 

 in fish or ant or tree : but man's ideals and purposes 

 are the outcome of the blind interplay of forces in 

 which fish and ant and tree play their unwitting roles. 

 True again that further analysis shows that the methods 

 of evolutionary progress are often crude, wasteful, and 

 slow : that some of our values are unreal or artificial : 

 but this does not destroy the main fact, and only means 

 that each side can here learn something from the 

 other. 



The main fact abides — that progress is an evolu- 

 tionary reality : and that an analysis of the modes 

 of biological progress may often help us in our quest 

 for human progress. 



The next great problem on which biology has 

 something to say to sociology is that eternal one of 

 the relation between individual and community. As 

 it is sometimes put. Does the individual exist for the 

 State, or the State for the individual ? In all non- 

 human biological aggregates — cell-colonies, second- 

 grade aggregates or metazoan organisms, third-grade 

 aggregates like Siphonophora and insect communities 

 — the very existence of the aggregate as a unit, its 

 biological efficiency and success, depend upon a per- 

 manent division of labour between its members, upon 

 their thorough-going specialization. This always and 

 inevitably involves a sacrifice of certain of their 

 potentialities to greater efficiency in one or a few 



