ls
are really communities, demonstrating the existence and partial antithesis
of the great laws of egoism and altruism, which are traceable even down to
_Amoeba_ and its like.

So much has been made of the lower kinds of cell-associations because the
mind of the layman is unconsciously imbued with the idea that human
society is a new thing,--an idea which we now see it is necessary to
discard at the outset. Indeed, the cell-association of the _Hydra_ and
insect type is a more compact and a more stable kind of community than any
group of human individuals worked out by nature toward the present end of
the whole scheme of evolution. That is to say, the subordination of
cell-interest to cell-group welfare, while it must not go so far as to
render the unit incapable of doing its work, is sufficiently advanced to
make uncontrolled individualism impossible. Let any class of _Hydra's_
cells, such as the nerve or muscle network, assume to exercise a selfish
preeminence or to conduct a "strike," the other classes, like the feeding
cells, would not be properly served and they would be unable in
consequence to work efficiently for the strikers. The immediate result
would be suicidal, for the selfish nerve-class would inevitably suffer
through the downfall of the whole social fabric. It is a nicely adjusted
equilibrium that is established, where the "equal rights" of all the
diverse cells consist in freedom to play a special part in the life of the
group, serving other individuals in return for their service. The Golden
Rule is a natural law as old as nature; for even in _Hydra's_ life,
unconscious discharge of duties to the race, and hence to others, is
obligatory. And all these low types of organic associations evolved ages
before the rules of human social order were vaguely recognized by the
reflective self-consciousness of man, to be formulated as the science of
ethics.

The evolution of the wonderfully varied societies found among insects
begins with the solitary insect itself, just as this, viewed as a
cell-community, originates from one-celled beginnings like _Amoeba_
through progressive evolution in time. The similarity between social
insects and human associations is clearer than in the case of a comparison
between an example from either group and a cell-community, because the
higher forms lack the organic contact of the components which is so
prominent a feature in the lower instance. The social bonds are looser and
the