328 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



tool as a language. The result of the experiments 

 and trials of thousands of generations during thou- 

 sands of years has been that each generation takes 

 possession of what was built by all previous genera- 

 tions and adds something in turn for subsequent 

 generations to improve upon. In this way our com- 

 plica-ted language has been built up. Now, this pos- 

 sibility of receiving the product of previous genera- 

 tions and adding to them is dependent upon the fact 

 that man lives in lasting communities in close asso- 

 ciations. Among animals the young associate with 

 their parents at most for only a few weeks and then 

 commonly leave them to care for themselves. In 

 most cases they separate from their parents com- 

 pletely and never know them again. This in itself 

 absolutely precludes the possibility of their develop- 

 ing a language, which can come only from a close 

 association of individuals for hundreds of genera- 

 tions. Language has thus been dependent upon the 

 formation of lasting organizations. 



Such organizations are not formed among animals. 

 Among higher animals, with which, of course, we are 

 alone concerned, the family association is fleeting 

 even when it occurs, and individuals rarely remain 

 together more than a few weeks, not long enough to 

 learn or develop language. We could, therefore, 

 look for traces of language only among such animals 

 as form societies. In this connection it is, therefore, 

 very significant to find that social animals do have 

 a language, a crude one to be sure, but still a lan- 

 guage. The social insects certainly communicate 

 with each other in some way. Among the herds of 

 ungulates we find examples of warnings from sen- 

 tinels which indicate danger. Among the social 



