AN 'IS. 



Although Luhhock has not been altogether fortunate in the selection 

 of species to illustrate his views, 1 believe we may adopt his conclusion 

 that among ants " there seem to be three principal types, offering a 

 curious analogy to the three great phases the hunting, pastoral and 

 agricultural stages- in the history of human development." It is 

 obvious that a further development towards the three remaining stages 

 in human progress the commercial, industrial and intellectual is not 

 even foreshadowed in the ants. Nor would this be possible, or indeed 

 conceivable, without conceptual thought and an appreciation of values 

 to which the ants have never attained. 



Granting the resemblances above mentioned between ant and human 

 societies, there are nevertheless three far-reaching differences between 

 insect and human organization and development to be constantly borne 

 in mind : 



1 . Ant societies are societies of females. The males really take no 

 part in the colonial activities, and, in most species, are present in the 

 nest only for the brief period requisite to insure the impregnation of 

 the young queens. The males take no part in building, provisioning or 

 guarding the nest or in feeding the workers or the brood. They are in 

 every sense the sc.nts scquior. Hence the ants resemble certain myth- 

 ical human .societies like the Amazons, but unlike these, all their activi- 

 ties center in the multiplication and care of the coming generations. 



2. In human society, apart from the functions depending on sexual 

 dimorphism, and barring individual differences and deficiencies which 

 can be partially or wholly suppressed, equalized or augmented by an 

 elaborate system of education, all individuals have the same natural 

 endowment. Each normal individual retains its various physiological 

 and psychological needs and powers intact, not necessarily sacrificing 

 any of them for the good of the community. In ants, however, the 

 female individuals, of which the society properly consists, are not all 

 alike but often very different, both in their structure (polymorphism) 

 and in their activities (physiological division of labor). Each member is 

 visibly predestined to certain social activities to the exclusion of others, 

 not as in man through the education of some endowment common to 

 all the members of the society, but through the exigencies of structure, 

 fixed at the time of hatching, /. c., the moment the individual enters on 

 its life as an active member of the community. 



3. Owing to this preestablished structure and the specialized func- 

 tions which it implies, ants are able to live in a condition of anarchistic 

 socialism, each individual instinctively fulfilling the demands of social 

 life without " guide, overseer or ruler." as Solomon correctly observed, 



