Man's Place in Nature 203 



of ethical. Yet we all know of many who can 

 transform their dreary "day's darg'' into a dis- 

 cipline of nobility — thus raising it higher than its 

 own poor merits do above the daily activity of that 

 exemplar of our childhood — the busy bee. On the 

 other hand, the bees are perhaps happier, till the 

 winter of their discontent draws near; they may be 

 troubled with parasites, but not with ideals. As 

 Walt Whitman said — so truly — of animals in gen- 

 eral — " They do not sweat and whine about their 

 condition; they do not lie awake in the dark and 

 weep for their sins; they do not make me sick 

 discussing their duty — not one is respectable or 

 unhappy in the whole world." 



As we study animal life we see a gradual emer- 

 gence of the fundamental springs of conduct which 

 we find — transmuted of course — in ourselves. 

 Starting with the simple protoplasts, responsive 

 to oxygen, warmth, food, and one another, and 

 also exhibiting in some cases a selective behaviour 

 which we cannot redescribe in physical and chem- 

 ical terms, we can hypothetically trace the evo- 

 lution of behaviour. Very important steps were 

 the formation of a *'body" of which death was 

 the price, the beginning of bilateral symmetry, the 

 consequent acquisition of head brains, the differ- 

 entiation of the sexes. From the stages now per- 

 sistent at different grades of the animal kingdom, 

 we infer that from a primary hunger there arose 



