EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



been found to be so characteristic of certain insect 

 colonies. 



Association and subsequent colony formation can be 

 accounted for on the basis of genetic theory. This 

 theory would claim that certain individuals due to 

 mutant changes of their genetic pattern showed ten- 

 dencies towards cooperation and association with other 

 creatures of their own species. In certain environments 

 the ones that showed this tendency must have had a 

 better chance of survival than the ones that did not 

 cooperate. On this basis the genetic pattern gradually 

 became transformed to produce individuals wath asso- 

 ciative tendencies. In time this altered genetic struc- 

 ture became the characteristic makeup of the species. 



But while the tendency to associate is apparently 

 predetermined by the genetic code of the individual, 

 the total pattern which this association assumes is not 

 implicit in the organic makeup of the individual ani- 

 mals. A few individual insects, separated from the 

 colony very early during their life spans, will show the 

 apparent drives or "instincts" of creatures of the orig- 

 inal colony, but are by themselves not able to fully 

 reconstruct a functioning colony. Beavers raised away 

 from the colony from babyhood on, will show the "in- 

 stinct" of building dams, but will fail to perform this 

 function with the degree of skill that would have been 

 attained had they been raised in the colony. 



It seems, therefore, that a new determinant has been 



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