CHAPTER XVIII 



MUTUAL AID AND COMMUNAL LIFE AMONG 



ANIMALS 



More ancient than competition is conil^ination. The little feeble 

 fluttering folk of God, the spinning; insects, the little mice in the 

 meadow, the rat in the cellar, the crane in the marshes or the boominor 

 bittern, all these have learned that God's "greatest word is tofccther 

 and not alone. He who is striving to make God's blessing and bounty 

 possible to most is stepping into line ^vith nature. The selfish man is 

 the isolated man. — Oscar Carlton McCulloch. 



Man is not the only social animal, nor the only animal 

 species whose individuals live in mutually advantageous rela- 

 tions with each other, and in mutually advantageous relations 

 with individuals of other animal kinds. Just as man lives 

 communally and mutually helpfully with other men, so do the 

 members of a great honeybee or ant connnunity live together: 

 and as we find various other animals as dogs, horses, and doves 

 living under the care and protection of man and returning to 

 him a measure of service in work, companionship, or other 

 heli)fulness for his care and feeding, so do we know of hundreds 

 of kinds of other insects that live commensally with ants, each 

 party to this commensal or synil)iotic life gaining something 

 from ^nd giving something to the other i)arty of this arrange- 

 ment. Indeed, the communal bfe of such insects as the social 

 bees, wasps, and ants is developed along true connnunistij 

 lines far more specialized than the communism shown by man. 



Just as students of human society can trace a series of ste|)s 

 from a very primitive living together or communal life among 

 men to the present highly sjiecialized condition, so among vari- 

 ous animals we can find a long series of gradatory conditions of 

 social life from mere gregariousness like that of a band of wolves 



3GD 



