origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a
factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such
animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a
physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of
admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a
time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be
treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's lecture has
more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a
work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with
rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants,
of animals and men. As to Buchner's work, suggestive though it is
and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The
book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations
are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among
animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and
sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just
as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have
contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a
whole. It is not love to my neighbour--whom I often do not know
at all--which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush
towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even
though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and
sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not
love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense)
which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in
order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces
wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens
or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend
their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor
personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer