Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/531

Rh the oblique prismatic system; no favoring conditions will enable the fragment of a polype to take on the structure of a mollusk.

Among such social aggregates as inferior creatures fall into, more or less definitely, the same truth holds. Whether they live in a mere assemblage, or whether they live in something like an organized union, with division of labor among its members, as happens in many cases, is unquestionably determined by the properties of the units. Given the structures and consequent instincts of the individuals as we find them, and the community they form will inevitably present certain traits; and no community having such traits can be formed out of individuals having other structures and instincts.

Those who have been brought up in the belief that there is one law for the rest of the universe and another law for mankind, will doubtless be astonished by the proposal to include aggregates of men in this generalization. And yet that the properties of the units determine the properties of the whole they make up, evidently holds of societies as of other things. A general survey of tribes and nations, past and present, shows clearly enough that it is so; and a brief consideration of the conditions shows, with no less clearness, that it must be so.

Ignoring for the moment the special traits of races and individuals, observe the traits common to members of the species at large; and consider how these must affect their relations when associated.

They have all needs for food, and have corresponding desires. To all of them exertion is a physiological expense; must bring a certain return in nutriment, if it is not to be detrimental; and is accompanied by repugnance when pushed beyond this limit, or even before reaching it. They are all of them liable to bodily injury, with accompanying pain, from various extreme physical actions; and they are liable to emotional pains, of positive and negative kinds, from one another's actions. As says Shylock, insisting on that human nature which Jews have in common with Christians:

Conspicuous, however, as is this possession of certain fundamental qualities by all individuals, there is no adequate recognition of the truth that from these individual qualities must result certain qualities in an assemblage of individuals; that in proportion as the individuals forming one assemblage are like in their qualities to the individuals forming another assemblage, the two assemblages will have likenesses;