708 THE RELATION OF INSTITUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENT. 



and ends with interdependent association or organization — a hierarchic 

 association of organisms in which each has special function and all 

 have individual and collective profit, while all are dominated by the 

 big-brained organism for the good of his world, be it small or large. 



As time passes, local association grows into general organization. 

 Each valley and hillside has a peculiar soil and water supply and 

 tends to bring forth peculiar plants, so that such shrubs as scorn the 

 charity of cooperation remain provincial. 1 When the plant offers 

 sweet perfume, or sapid fruit, or nutritious nuts to the flying insect 

 or wandering herbivore or migrating bird, its pollen and seed are car- 

 ried into other provinces and its posterity enjoy an ever-increasing 

 range of association ; and thereby the force of life begins to overcome 

 local hardness and the unselfish plaut becomes a prophet of good, albeit 

 of little honor in its own country. When a herbivore or fowl sacrifices 

 tithes of toothsome flesh, it tempts carnivorous enemies, yet is thereby 

 led from province to province and made to develop the individuality 

 requisite for ultimate success in the strife for existence; and when 

 beast or fowl communes with man, as did fleshly turkey with flesh- 

 eating Indian, it enters on a nobler career which may carry it to the 

 ends of the earth, so that its original home is lost in its general diffusion. 

 While the human horde hugs the native heath, it wars with all other 

 tribes; but as the huntsmen follow quarry into neighboring ranges 

 they meet enemies, when the more savage are slain and the more 

 peaceful survive and sometimes find favor among alien daughters, so 

 that the tribes are united; and in this way clans are blent and prov- 

 inces joined to the extent that peaceful arts arise and bind men, 

 animals, and plants in far-reaching union. So it is that organization 

 begins with escape from provincial barriers, and extends unto cosmop- 

 olite association — an association in which the selfish and scrimping 

 are subordinate and the generous superordinate, while the humane in 

 mind and heart dominate over all. 



As time passes or as progress rises, organization grows into institu- 

 tions. The migrant bird returns to its nest aud the feral beast holds 

 to its range and watering place, and thus property right arises, albeit 

 vaguely; the, colony of farmer ants clears a threshing floor a thousand 

 ant-lengths across aud cultivates a grass field thrice as great and lays 

 highways to neighboring farms, and thereby individual and common 

 property right are adjusted; the modern Papago inherits title to a spot 

 of ground in the permanent village and to another spot in the tempo- 

 rale where crops are made, as well as to a share in the spring or storm 

 freshet, while his water-storing ancestor must have acquired interest 

 in irrigation works ; so that property right springs among lower organ- 

 isms and matures among men, growing definite through custom, the 

 parent of common law. Among beasts, the family is the social unit 



! The provincial character of the desert flora lias been recognized by Tourney, 

 Coville, and others. 



