th and value of any form of conduct and of every
single act can be estimated by definite biological criteria. The
institution of marriage and the conventions of common morality have their
biological value in their provision for the care of children; the
safeguards of property rights enable the industrious--the biologically
efficient--to keep the fruits of their labors; the establishment of formal
civil and criminal laws is biologically valuable in a social way, in so
far as such laws diminish the unsettling effects of personal animosity and
the desire to wreak personal vengeance; the establishment and
differentiation of legislative, executive, and judicial organs of
government lead to greater social solidarity and higher biological
efficiency. Thus unchecked individualism is just as wrong ethically and
biologically among men as it would be in the case of insect communities,
as pointed out in the preceding chapter; no one has a right to expect
service or deference to personal interest from others if he fails to work
for them and for the good of all. It is true that the social structure
will stand a great amount of tension, but if this becomes too great,
either a readjustment is effected, as when King John was forced by the
barons to concede their rights, or else the whole nation suffers, owing to
the selfishness of a few. In the war between Russia and Japan, the latter
won because the individual soldier merged his individuality in the larger
mechanism of the regiment and brigade and army corps, gladly sacrificing
his life for the nation represented by the person of its Emperor. The
single Russian soldier may have been far superior to a Japanese in
muscular strength, and perhaps in arms also, but selfishness and greed on
the part of many who were responsible for the organization and equipment
of the Russian armies rendered the whole fighting machine less coherent
and therefore less efficient than that of the Japanese.

In the evolution of ethics the recognition of ideals of conduct has
followed long after the institution of a particular precept by nature,
which is obeyed instinctively and mechanically by force of inheritance. In
the case of the communities of insects, the results are the same as though
the individual animal fully recognized the value of concerted endeavor. So
among primitive savages of to-day there is only a vague conception of
abstract duty as such, or it may be practically lacking, as in the case of
the