Associated Responsibility 43 



someone promoted by new circumstance to the conspicuous 

 place. In all this motion there is little interference. Each 

 one in turn yields a little to prevent collision. There is har- 

 monious concerted action. Assume in one individual an 

 occasion to act alone and selfishly, or better observe one 

 when accident causes such a separation. The solitude is 

 evidently distasteful and unpleasant and the greatest effort is 

 made to recover company. 



Now this characteristic love of the society of one's kind 

 seen simply in this lowly grade is evident at some times or 

 ages in various degrees of development in all grades of 

 animal life, and a little reflection will show that it is the 

 broad early expression of a great principle of association 

 which persists into the higher life as the foundation of al- 

 truism. In man the instinct is notably strong, as might be 

 expected of a race individually defenceless and weak. In 

 the higher brutes it characterizes the non-combative species 

 and even some aggressive kinds. The cattle and deer and 

 fowls, and insects such as bees and ants, show many gre- 

 garious developments. Observe how all of them will form 

 a crowd for instinctive purpose and follow a leader little 

 known and chance appointed, and failing him, will follow 

 another. Or note how in the deeper motives, men physically 

 situated in separation and apart ; are still prone to be guided 

 by the intellectual influence of such as find themselves, or 

 put themselves, in front; sometimes as in the case of the 

 fishes, with more readiness than discretion. And see how 

 all the other creatures of this habit, horses and wasps, dogs 

 and sparrows, all actively keep the same association impulse 

 and live by it. Evidently it is a persistent impulse as well 



