"Or the vermiform appendix?" Ellis pursued.
"Oh, well," said Wilson, a little huffed at last, "if you are tired of being serious it's no use for me to continue."
"I'm sorry, Wilson!" said Ellis. "I won't do it again; but one does get a little tired of the social organism."
"More people talk about it," answered Wilson, "than really understand it."
"Very true," retorted Ellis, "especially among biologists."
At this point I began to fear we should lose our subject in polemics; so I ventured to recall Wilson to the real issue.
"Supposing," I said, "that we grant the whole of your position, how does it help us to judge what is good?"
"Why," he said, "in this way. What we learn from biology is, that it is the constant effort of nature to combine cells into individuals and individuals into societies—the protozoon, in other words, evolves into the animal, the animal into what some have called the 'hyper-zoon,' or super-organism. Well, now, to this physical evolution corresponds a psychical one. What kind of consciousness an animal may have, we can indeed only conjecture; and we cannot even go so far as conjecture in the case of the cell; but we may reasonably assume that important psychical changes of the original elements are accompaniments and conditions of their aggregation into larger entities; and the morality (if you will permit the word) of the cell that is incorporated in an animal body will consist in adapting itself as perfectly as may be to the new conditions, in subordinating its consciousness to that of the Whole—briefly, in acquiring a social instead of an individual self. And now, to follow the clue thus obtained into the higher manifestations of life. As the cell is to the animal, so is the individual to society, and that on the psychical as well as on the physical side. Nature has perfected the animal; she is perfecting society; that is the end and goal of all her striving. When, therefore, you raise the question, what is Good, biology has this simple answer to give you: Good is the perfect social soul in the perfect social body."
As he concluded, Ellis exclaimed softly,"'Parturiunt montes,'" and Leslie took it up with: "And not even a mouse!"
"Whether it is a mouse or no," I said, "it would be hard to say, until we had examined it more closely. At present it seems to me more like a cloud, which may or may not conceal the goddess Truth. But the question I really want to ask is, What particular advantage Wilson gets from the biological method? For the conclusion itself, I suppose, might have been reached, and commonly is, without any recourse to the aid of natural science."