Associated Responsibility 41 



the associated life newly accomplished, are always in sight; 

 and in them conduct appears to take form anew. We may 

 review in lower life now the same evolution in which our 

 own arose. We may see first mere impulse arising in cir- 

 cumstances which impel a sensitive organism, and cause it 

 to react in volition; and then, by survival of the best kind 

 of conduct, volition appears which is distinctly selective, 

 and restrains activities again to things usually acceptable to 

 others. There is in these preferences a frequent giving up 

 of suggested acts which would be unsupported by fellows 

 or distasteful to them ; and a favoring or adoption of other 

 acts because though less desired they are approved by those 

 associated. The sacrifice of one's own choice is made be- 

 cause the energy needed to persist in it has been found too 

 great to make the result profitable to the individual — and the 

 accord is given because the act in question can be done with 

 smaller expenditure of power. Now this agreement is seen 

 operating in very primitive life without consciousness of 

 its advantage, or even of its existence. This grade of con- 

 duct does not need a perception of benefits. It does not 

 need even highly developed instinct, such as that of the 

 migrating swallow, to organize the first racial association; 

 and still less does it need the disciplinary habits of the deer 

 or wild cattle or wolves. In these animals the question of 

 motive is likely to be confused only a little less than in man 

 and to be attributed incorrectly to a dawning reasoning 

 power. To see the purer, clearer source of this social motive 

 a still lower intellectual capacity should be studied. Observe 

 for example a shoal of little fish, so young that they have 

 scarcely got their definite fishlike form. They exhibit, 



