d
benefits may be extended. He does this so far as he may be able in full
confidence that the elements and basic principles are discoverable in
lower nature, just as they are in the case of the material make-up and
mental constitution of the single human individual.

A more explicit preliminary statement must now be given of the grounds for
the belief that social evolution is but a part of organic evolution in
general. Some of these reasons are not far to seek, but their cogency can
scarcely be appreciated until we have examined the concrete facts of the
whole biological series. Any human society selected for examination--be it
a tribe, a village community, or a nation--is in last analysis an
aggregate of human units and nothing besides. Its life consists of the
combined activities of such components--and nothing else. Could we
subtract the members one by one, there would be no intangible residuum
after all the people and their lives had been taken away. When these
simple facts are recognized, it is clear at once that the concerted
activities performed by biological units cannot be anything but organic in
their ultimate basis and nature; the evolution of such activities thus
takes its place as a part of organic evolution.

The task of tracing out the history of social organizations of whatever
grade can now be defined in precise terms: in simple words, it is to learn
how the activities of the component biological units making up any
association really differ from the vital performances of biological units
existing by themselves. What is it that distinguishes a savage of
antiquity from an American of to-day? The modern example is just as much
an animal as the earlier type, and his physiology is essentially the same.
It is something added to the common biological qualities of all men, some
relation which does not appear as such in the life of rude tribes, that
makes the distinction. And it is just this superadded relation that
requires explanation, as regards its exact biological value and its
historic development as well.

In undertaking this difficult task, it seems best to begin with the very
simplest organisms that biology knows, working upwards through the scale
to man. By this course the most basic elements of organization can be
discovered without having to look for them among the intricate details of
our own vital situation, where secondary and adventitious elements stand
out in undue prominence, and where the i