EVIDENCE FROM COLONIAL OR COMPOUND ANIMALS. 307 



an animalcular guise, is it overstepping the possibilities of natural 

 facts to suggest that the social traits and characteristics to which that 

 germ attains may likewise have had a lowly and material beginning ? 

 Such an idea, so far from possessing any elements of impossibility, is 

 grounded on a rational basis namely, on that opinion which teaches 

 that community of origin may, and often does, entail similarity of 

 results. Sufficient has been said to show that in human existence 

 reign many of the colonial traits of lower spheres. And if, perchance, 

 some dim echoes of such lowly traits may linger in the scientific mind 

 when contemplating the highest existence of all, the mind will regard 

 such similarity as founded upon no chance basis, but as having 

 originated from that continuity of cause and effect which runs un- 

 broken through the warp and woof of the universe of life. 



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