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 impersonal view is well-nigh
impossible. Step by step we will then work up the scale of social
morphology, approaching in the natural evolutionary order that part of the
subject which interests us most deeply.
Just as the construction of an edifice must begin with the fashioning of
the individual brick and bolt and girder, so the evolution of a biological
association begins with the unitary organisms consisting of single cells,
like _Amoeba_. We have had occasion to discuss this animal many times
in our previous studies of one or another aspect of evolution, and once
again we must return to it in order to reestablish certain points that are
of fundamental importance for our present purposes. Within the limits of
its simple body, _Amoeba_ performs the several tasks which nature
demands a living thing shall do; it feeds and respires and moves,
continually utilizing matter and energy obtained from the environment for
the reconstruction of its substance and replenishment of its vital powers;
it cooerdinates the activities of its simple body, and by its reflex
responses to environmental influences it maintains its adjustment to the
external conditions of life.
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