210 Shadowings 



self-direction in a crowd is shared by man with 

 very inferior forms of animal being, evolu 

 tional proof that it must be a faculty im 

 mensely older than man. Does not a herd of 

 cattle, a herd of deer, a flock of sheep, offer us 

 the same phenomenon of mutual yielding ? Or 

 a flock of birds gregarious birds especially : 

 crows, sparrows, wild pigeons? Or a shoal of 

 fish ? Even among insects bees, ants, termites 



we can study the same law of intuitive self- 

 displacement. The yielding, in all these cases, 

 must still represent an inherited experience un 

 imaginably old. Could we endeavor to retrace 

 the whole course of such inheritance, the attempt 

 would probably lead us back, not only to the 

 very beginnings of sentient life upon this planet, 

 but further, back into the history of non-sen 

 tient substance, back even to the primal evolu 

 tion of those mysterious tendencies which are 

 stored up in the atoms of elements. Such atoms 

 we know of only as points of multiple resistance, 



incomprehensible knittings of incomprehensi 

 ble forces. Even the tendencies of atoms doubt 

 less represent accumulations of inheritance 



but here thought checks with a shock at the 

 eternal barrier of the Infinite Riddle. 



