Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/642

624  from Dryden a stanza that to-day has more of meaning, perhaps, than either he or the poet ever perceived:

All investigation only adds grander significance to the grand utterance of Agassiz, that "man is the end toward which all the animal creation has tended since the first appearance of the first palæozoic fishes."

Is it not true that "an increasing purpose" does run through the ages by the processes of which, not only "the thoughts of men are widened," but enlarged encouragement is given to all their hopes and expectations of the future?

 

HE conceptions of biologists have been greatly advanced by the discovery that organisms which, when adult, appear to have scarcely anything in common, were, in their first stages, very similar; and that, indeed, all organisms start with a common structure. Recognition of this truth has revolutionized not only their ideas respecting the relations of organisms to one another, but also respecting the relations of the parts of each organism to one another.

If societies have evolved, and if that mutual dependence of their parts which social coöperation implies, and which constitutes them organized bodies, has been gradually reached, then the implication is that, however unlike their developed structures become, there is a rudimentary structure with which they all set out. And, if there can be recognized any such primitive unity, recognition of it will help us to interpret the ultimate diversity. We shall understand better how in each society the several components of the political agency have come to be what we now see them, and how those of one society are related to those of another.

Setting out with an unorganized horde, including both sexes and all ages, let us ask what must happen when some question, as that of migration or defense against enemies, has to be decided. The assembled individuals will fall, more or less clearly, into two divisions. The elder, the stronger, and those whose sagacity and courage have 