154 The Morality of Nature 



tween colonies in their greater or less profit of more or less 

 favorable conditions, but this is passive not aggressive active 

 rivalry. So far as the elementary activities are concerned 

 each individual is bound into the community. The identity 

 of interest is as complete as in the two prospective halves of 

 the ripening protozoon before division, and more so than 

 those halves after division. Any injury to or death of an 

 individual of this colony is an injury to all neighbors, just 

 as any injury to or death of a limb of a tree is an injury to 

 the tree. The whole resources of the organization so far 

 as they are available are concerned in preventing or repair- 

 ing such injury. In brief an evolution is visible in which 

 the prime altruistic principle is potent, and the advancement 

 of self at the expense of others is still undeveloped. 



But the argument will suggest itself that every growth 

 upward of a new individual upon an old in this colony is a 

 raising of self at the expense of others. To a superficial 

 view it may appear so. If the new individual were of 

 foreign origin it would be so; at times perhaps it is so. 

 But it is not so when, in normal development a parent buds, 

 and produces offspring, and plants the bud upon its own 

 structure, transferring part of its own germplasm to a 

 position of new advantage, along with others of that new 

 generation. The transfer thus observed is an activity of the 

 old generation, not of the new. It is a self-sacrificing 

 episode rather than a self-seeking one, because the mature 

 creature controls the process and not the infant. But the 

 self thus sacrificed is only the inferior vitality of the other 

 self which is promoted. And the principle is equally well 

 illustrated in the human life of simple savages in a tropical 



