mammoth and the mastodon. She would try a new method which should dispense with gross physical aggregations, but should minister to the same needs and afford the same powers. The body should be left free, the mind alone should be incorporated in the new unit. The non-material nexus proved as efficient as the physical one had been. The flock, the herd, the pack, the swarm, new creatures all, flourished and ranged the world. Their power depended on the capacity for intercommunication amongst their members and expanded until the limits of this were reached. As long as intercommunication was limited the full possibilities of the new experiment were concealed, but at length appeared a creature in whom this capacity could develop indefinitely. At once a power of a new magnitude was manifest. Puny as were his individuals, man’s capacity for communication soon made him master of the world. The very quality, however, which gave him success introduced a new complication of his fate. His brain power allowed him to speak and understand and so to communicate and combine more effectively than any other animal; his brain power gave him individuality and egoism, and the possibility of varied reaction which enabled him to obey the voice of instinct after the fashion of his own heart. All combination therefore was irregular, inco-ordinate, and only very slowly progressive. He has even at {213} times wandered into blind paths where the possibility of progressive combination is lost.
Nevertheless the needs and capacities that were at work in the primeval amœba are at work in him. In his very flesh and bones is the impulse towards closer and closer union in larger and larger fellowships. To-day he is fighting his way towards that goal, fighting for the perfect unit which Nature has so long foreshadowed, in which there shall be a complete communion of its members, unobstructed by egoism or hatred, by harshness or arrogance or the wolfish lust for blood. That perfect unit will be a new creature, recognizable as a single entity; to its million-minded power and knowledge no barrier will be insurmountable, no gulf impassable, no task too great.