t the
adoption of new and advantageous habits are certain to be exceedingly
rare.

It is an interesting fact that communalism has been confined to animals
of comparatively low organization. The most complete examples of it
exist in the polyps and some other low forms, in which each community
has become a compound individual, the members remaining attached to the
parent stock. The next higher examples to be met are the frequently
cited ants and bees, belonging to the lowly organized class of
arthropoda, yet, through the advantage of association and mutual aid,
developing actions and habits only found elsewhere in the human race.
The only example among vertebrates is that of the beavers, members of
the low order of rodents. With these the results are less varied and
intricate than with the ants, in accordance with the much smaller size
of the community. All the higher vertebrates are either social or
solitary in habit, and among them the narrow specialism of the communal
forms does not exist. Each individual works in large measure for itself,
its mental powers remain generalized, and it is not tied down to the
performance of a series of fixed hereditary acts from which escape is
well-nigh impossible.

Of the social animals, man presents the most complete type, and the one
from which we can best deduce the conditions of the class. A human
community is made up of individuals of many degrees of intellectual
ability, the mass remaining at a low level, the few attaining a high
level. Yet those of high powers of intellect set the standard for the
whole, teach the lower either by precept or example, and aid effectively
in advancing the standard of the community. A rope or chain is said to
be as weak as its weakest part. A human community, on the contrary, may
be said to be as strong as its strongest part. The standing of the whole
is dependent upon the thoughts and acts of the few, from whom the
general mass receive new ideas and gain new habits. The existing
intellectual and industrial position of mankind is very largely a result
of ideas evolved by individuals age after age, and preserved as the
mental property of the whole. Destroy the books and works of art and
industry of any community, cut off its intellectual leaders, remove from
the general mind the results of education, and it would at once fall
back to a low level and be obliged to begin again its slow climb upward.
The intellectual standing of any civilized nation d