ECOLOGICAL 125 



tend to be preserved, while variations in the direction of the anti- 

 social tend to be sifted out. To take a concrete case, the evolution 

 of speech, there is no doubt that the first use of the voice was as a 

 sex-call, and that it began among Amphibians long ago. Now while 

 many solitary animals have a voice, it has obviously greater survival 

 value in a society, where significant calls and cries are of more 

 frequent usefulness. Thus a simple animal society in certain condi- 

 tions would not only act as a stimulus to using sounds, but would 

 tend to winnow out the variants with the more ineffective vocabu- 

 lary. But this is not in the least at variance with the complementary 

 idea that the acquisition of audible means of communication would 

 favour the development of individual intelligence and the survival 

 of the better-brained variants who used the new instrument to best 

 advantage. "Nothing succeeds like success"; and evolution works 

 on a subtle compound interest principle. Our proposition is that the 

 social habit favours the advance of intelligence, both in the indi- 

 vidual and in the race. 



(VI) A sixth advantage of the social habit is that it works in what 

 amounts practically to a moral and ethical direction. Many a soli- 

 tary animal of predatory habits and each-for-himself ways is a 

 pattern of parental care. Thus there is no surpassing that of the 

 mother otter or the mother stoat. With admirable devotion they 

 illustrate the maternal virtues, giving expression to their intrinsically 

 fine natures. This "finish" of the maternal care is not surprising 

 when we think of the survival value of education in these predatory 

 and Ishmaelitish types. Thus it is plain enough that the social 

 habit cannot improve on the parental care which is exhibited by 

 many of the solitaries. At the same time it may be claimed for 

 animal societies that they tend to foster kindly feelings. They pre- 

 suppose a measure of kin-sympathy; the complexity of inter-rela- 

 tions stimulates social feeling in the individual; and the welfare of 

 the society demands the winnowing out or elimination of variations 

 in an anti-social direction. Thus animal societies have tended to 

 favour what may be called the very materials of morality. 



But they also adumbrate what is in a stricter sense ethical conduct, 

 inasmuch as they demand a certain degree of self-subordination, 

 and a measure of willingness to recognise the claims of others. The 

 social animal at this intelligent level, as we must so far call it, has 

 to habituate itself to work in a team ; and is it not one of the deepest 

 of moral lessons to learn to "play the game"? Moreover, in the 

 animal society there is the beginning of conventions and unwritten 

 laws ; there is sometimes, as in the rookery or the wolf-pack, a power- 

 ful social restraint on individual impulse. This points towards 

 ethics. 



(VII) There is, we think, a seventh great advantage in the social 

 way of living, that it allows of the trial of variations with a freedom 



