LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG LOWER ANIMALS. 681 



and permanently gregarious species, as distinguished from such as 

 merely flock together temporarily for some casual purpose, shows 

 plain marks of a subdivision into nationalities. These tribes, by 

 whatever name man may condescend to call them, possess the 

 main features of similar aggregations among the human species. 

 They lay claim to some particular territory ; they defend it to the 

 best of their ability against outsiders, and at the same time in a 

 manner truly human they are not unwilling to encroach upon the 

 domains of their neighbors. They have even two distinct moral 

 codes, one to be observed toward fellow-citizens and the other for 

 aliens of their own species. 



Nationality among the lower animals shows itself in two very 

 different types. Among vertebrates, the nation, wherever it exists, 

 is composed, as in the human species, of a number of families, 

 monogamous or polygamous as the case may be. 



Among the Articulata, at least in the only cases where true 

 nationality can be traced i. e., among insects the social unit is 

 not the family but the individual. In the case of the hive bee we 

 might, indeed, say that the family and the nation are coextensive. 

 Among ants this is not the case, since in every well-established 

 ant-hill there are several queens, so that the community is not 

 linked together by blood. It may be contended that the absence 

 of the family, viewed as a something which for most individuals 

 has claims stronger than those of the state, is the cause which has 

 permitted the successful organization of communism in insect so- 

 cieties. 



Among ants, bees, wasps, etc., the state has no rival. She ab- 

 sorbs all those sympathies and energies which in human society 

 the average individual devotes to the interests of his wife and 

 children. 



We thus see that, from their own point of view, theorists on 

 social reform have been logically consistent in attacking the in- 

 stitution of marriage and the entire system of domestic life, 

 though unwittingly they have sought to approximate man to the 

 condition of the ant and the bee. They would form society, not 

 as heretofore of families, but of individuals ; or, as it might be 

 expressed in physical language, they seek to build up the com- 

 munity not of molecules, but of atoms ! 



But suppose that communism were successful in the abolition 

 of marriage among mankind, would it therefore reach its ideal ? 

 Let us look a little more closely into insect life. 



It is not enough to show that the failure of communism among 

 mankind and its success among ants and bees are due to the exist- 

 ence and the power of the family in the former case and to its 

 absence in the latter. We must yet inquire into the why and 

 the wherefore of so important a distinction. Vertebrate society, 



