PRACTICAL VALUE OF PURE SCIENCE 245 



the wax and build of it the geometrical comb, even ventilate the hive. 

 No wonder that men sit for hours in their gardens contemplating such 

 organized unity. The drones, they represent a plutocracy, they have 

 but one mission and when that is accomplished the workers kill them. 

 Different wild bees and wasps exhibit various stages leading up to this 

 complex state. Yet still more wonderful governments are known 

 among the ants, with their different castes of workers, each with its 

 particular set of occupations, with their more complex nests with gran- 

 aries, dining-chambers and bed-rooms ; with their habits of harvesting, 

 of keeping milch cattle and providing stables for them, of cleansing 

 the young, of growing and tending mushroom beds, true vegetable 

 gardens beneath the earth, with even the habits of keeping slaves and 

 guests. Ants also have a language by which they communicate their 

 ideas to each other, not by articulate words, but by touch and smell; 

 and certain solitary wasps are known that make use of a stone as a 

 tool, a faculty generally supposed to be limited to mankind. 



Now, such cases have been discovered by biologists, and biologists 

 are analyzing their evolution. Pure science has made them known for 

 the pleasure of the work and of the explanation. Yet it is not idle 

 to suppose that such study may yet have its bearings on human social 

 problems. Three practical men have turned with profit to the study 

 of the social life of insects: McCook, the American preacher; Lubbock, 

 the English parliamentarian, and Maeterlinck, the Belgian novelist. 

 Eobert Bruce got inspiration from a spider, and engineers have studied 

 with profit the architectural skill of insects and spiders, particularly 

 with regard to bridge making. The study of bees offers much more 

 than the mere output of commercial honey. These lower animals show 

 the real natural state of society, and make ridiculous Bousseau's wild 

 imaginings. They have their trades, their agriculture and animal 

 breeding, their guests and slaves, even their tools; they construct an 

 eminently appropriate architecture with no waste of material, they 

 store food and keep their cities clean and aseptic; some show even the 

 beginnings of barter and exchange. Most of these occupations we 

 generally suppose to be limited to ourselves, for we are nothing if not 

 egotistic. The wonder of it is the perfect order and harmony, the 

 excellence of the state. Willoughby was undoubtedly wrong in arguing 

 that the state exists only in the case of man. Now, can sociology afford 

 to disregard such data? Can the conflicting factors of human society 

 be explained only by the study of man? Surely we ought to at least 

 wrest from the insects their secret of perfect harmony. Many of man's 

 occupations extend far back into nature, therefore to understand them 

 we must trace them to the community life of lower animals, even back 

 of this to the origin of the factor that made the family, the maternal 

 instinct. Sociology has applied some of the teachings of pure science, 



