CHAPTERS ON EVOLUTION. 



zoophytes and the tapeworm-race with its millions of ova, and inde- 

 finite reproductive power as well unquestionably possess as their chief 

 end the perpetuation of the race. How changed is the physiological 

 prospect in higher existence ! There the energies are devoted to the 

 improvement, sustenance, and development of the individual. There 

 is less devotion to tHe species as compared with what obtains in 

 lower forms ; and the colonial interests, whilst 

 still represented and conserved, are limited in 

 their scope and direction to the development 

 of new tissue-matter. The higher animal, in 

 short, is not obviously " colonial " in the 

 sense that a zoophyte or a "sea-mat" is 

 compound, because the energies and forces, 

 as well as the material, which in the lower 

 being reproduces readily the form of the 

 organism, are devoted to other functions. 

 Life in the lower and compound organism 

 is made up of one common interest, namely, 

 the increase of the colony and species. In 

 the higher animal, life becomes a far more 

 personal matter, and its aims are more 

 distinctly individualised. Existence in the 

 colonial zoophyte is passed, so to speak, in 

 marriage and giving in marriage ; and the 

 interests of the race are bound up in the 

 work of its own extension. In the higher 

 organism, individual interests and the life of 

 the single organism occupy the greater part 

 of its energies, so that, to use an expressive 

 dictum, " the organism is like a society in 

 which everyone is so engrossed by his special business, that he has 

 neither time nor inclination to marry." 



There is abundant illustration at hand of the view that the culti- 

 vation of individual interests destroys, by concentration of energy, 

 the colonial organisation. Such an opinion finds its confirmation in 

 the details of higher animal existence, and in the disappearance of 

 those powers of bodily separation after injury which characterise 

 lower life. The organic republic or colony, in which every unit is as 

 good as its neighbour, is typically and perfectly represented in the 

 zoophyte. But this thoroughgoing republicanism is as impossible of 

 continuance in higher physical existence and in spheres biological, 

 as it is found to be incompatible with the political development of 

 nations. That is to say, as, in the life political, here and there special 

 developments cause men to shoot ahead of their neighbours and to 

 distance their competitors in the struggle for existence by individual 



FIG. 199. DAISY. 



