246 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



ample scope for the most untiring laborer and the most brilliant genius 

 in the field of research. Spencer's analogy, therefore, is insufficient, 

 and the attempt to base sociology on the specifications laid down for 

 an organism is but little superior to the attempts of certain other 

 sociologists who find all sociology bound up in the consciousness of 

 kind or in the psychological process of imitation. Spencer, how- 

 ever, did point to the continuity of law as is evidenced in the biolog- 

 ical and sociological worlds. Instead of an organism he could have 

 used a species with much greater effect, for in a species are found, 

 although in a crude and rudimentary stage, the first beginnino-s of 

 social life. 



One of the most striking, and yet at the same time one of the least 

 observed, facts about specific action is the pre-eminence of the spe- 

 cific as such. The individual is secondary to the species. Instincts, 

 which are characteristically the grand trunk line of transmission and 

 continuity in the lower orders of the zoological series, are peculiar 

 and very important in this, that they are always in their origin and 

 bloom for the benefit of the species to which the animi-.l may belong 

 which possesses the instinct. They are of benefit to the individual 

 only secondarily, in so far as that individual may be of benefit to 

 the species. The mother gives up her life for the child. She dies, 

 but the child, and through it the species, lives. The salmon strug- 

 gles up the Columbia river for a thousand miles, is torn and bat- 

 tered by the rocks and waterfalls on the long and weary journey, lays 

 its eggs, and dies ; but the race lives on, although at the loss and 

 sacrifice of one of its best members. The long history of the mam- 

 malia or mothers is a record of innumerable such examples. Of 

 course, it is not necessarily true that the individual performs an in- 

 stinctive act with the conscious7iess that the species may be bene- 

 fited, but the persistent fact remains that in the long run only those 

 species and individuals survive which act in such a way that the spe- 

 cies may be further propagated. Instincts are always for species or 

 race preservation. They are specific, altruistic, other-regarding, 

 profoundly social. They may not be all consciously such, but in 

 their origin and bloom they are in their final import intensely social. 



