Altruism Fundamental i53 



others, is one of the simplest forms of activity and volition. 

 Thus the prosperity of a growing colony in this beneficial 

 arrangement would surpass that of a colony not using it. 

 Such advantage would be stereotyped in the joint use of the 

 newly acquired power of secretion of structure making 

 material. The corals exemplify this process. In this lowly 

 life there is a considerable development of function. There 

 is social alliance evolved to distinct system. And yet there 

 is between the members of this colony no such rivalry as in 

 later forms appears to be indispensable. But mere associa- 

 tion in equality of function does not develop altruism; it 

 prepares the way for it. There is the possibility of differ- 

 ent degrees of benefit in the different situation of individuals 

 in the colony. And already, as in the case of the corals, the 

 use of structures needing renewal and permitting of growth 

 only by superposing new upon old, has made necessary the 

 individual death. Circumstances have arrived in which 

 rivalry might have developed. Each individual might have 

 established itself in an effort to prevent the use of its struc- 

 ture as a foundation for others of later time, and so might 

 have enjoyed a longer period of individual life. This habit 

 is in fact discoverable in some other creatures. But these in 

 review, accept an individual life with a term of predestined 

 brevity, for the sake of the higher growth it affords to the 

 race. They have abandoned the potential immortality of 

 the individual, for the privilege of renewal and growth of 

 the structure; and in that structure they abandon the un- 

 inhabitable parts, by a transfer of the life germ continually 

 upward to the new, maintaining thus the potential immor- 

 tality of the lineage. There is a possibility of rivalry be- 



