A Great Step.

Social life was a great step forward in increasing the survival-chances of animals. Ants, bees, the social insects, and some lower animals, do what they must—act almost entirely through the compulsion of their inherited, rigid instinct pattern. But the personality of a human being, though he is endowed with a certain number of similtr elementary urges, is shaped and created by the society into which he is born he no longer depends on his inherited tendencies to equip him for the life-struggle—he is heir to the unbiologically transmitted social tradition. Through the cumulative effect of social and cultural tradition, man has risen to his present proud place—the ape that walks erect has attained to a greater control over his environment than has any other species. Since this is the biological destiny of the race, it becomes the justification of the individual's life in the race's continuity.