EVIDENCE FROM COLONIAL OR COMPOUND ANIMALS. 299 



reproduced as accurately in the buddings of new individuals from 

 the parent-body, as in the perpetual budding of the zoophyte. 

 Last of all, we see in the highest animals the same innate and 

 fundamental constitution on the basis of the colony. The human 

 frame, morphologically viewed, is a collection of cell-colonies, 

 produced by segregation of more primitive collections of units, and 

 primarily, if the story told by development be true, by the modification 

 first of one cell, and secondly of one original series of cells. 



The fundamental constitution of the living worlds thus appears to 

 be of colonial nature. It remains for us to discover how the com- 

 pound constitution has merged into these united and single per- 

 sonalities we regard as the highest members of the animal and plant 

 series in a word, how the " colony " has become the " individual," 

 the highest type of which we recognise in ourselves. If varying con- 

 ditions have operated to produce the diverse constitutions of animals 

 and plants we see displayed before our waiting eyes to-day, we may 

 justly assume that a more complex series of causes than we are able 

 to determine, is responsible for the origin of those higher natures of 

 which we ourselves form part. Yet here and there clues to the 

 understanding of the problem are not wanting in the considerations 

 which the study of even lower grades Of life disclose to view. The 

 apparently single nature of the germ from which high and low 

 organisms alike spring may best be explained, perhaps, on grounds 

 connected with the husbanding of vital power, and on the idea 

 that the apparent unity and singleness of the germ naturally re- 

 produce the constitution of the single cells or units of the com- 

 pound organism from which they spring. The egg or germ, in a word, 

 reflects in its first stage the constitution of the particular unit from 

 which it was derived. In its secondary stage it repeats the colonial 

 condition of which its parent-unit formed part, and the features of 

 which it is destined in due time to reproduce. 



As, however, we survey the fields of animal and plant existence, 

 we discover plainly-marked tendencies of development which fully 

 account for the advance from the true colonial constitution of 

 zoophyte, tapeworm, and social insect, to the marked and apparently 

 single personality of higher life. The higher we rise in the organic 

 series, the less marked becomes the tendency to devote the energies 

 of life to the perpetuation of the species or race ; and the more per- 

 fectly do the powers which concentrate, ennoble, and advance the 

 individual interests become developed. It is a self-evident fact that 

 in lower life much of the bodily energy is occupied with the develop- 

 ment of new individuals, or, in the case of an animal colony, with 

 increase of the colonial membership. One has but to glance at the 

 zoophyte-races to find clear proof of this latter statement. Imitating 

 the plant-creation in the fulness of their vegetable growth, the tribes of 



