82 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



with institutions of enslavement of other ants, organized 

 raids to capture slaves, and with agriculture and domestica- 

 tion of foreign species. In complexity and efficiency they 

 are of the highest order, and not the least of their achieve- 

 ments is their perfect government. As in other insect so- 

 cieties, each individual is fitted by instinct and morphology 

 to a particular activity which it carries out without fuss or 

 fury. As we shall see in Chapter 1 1, free will and high-level 

 understanding are perhaps sacrificed in such perfection of 

 social control, but nevertheless these insects are not entirely 

 without mental talents nor are they without the basic pleas- 

 ures of life. Man may well envy their great capacity for 

 government, even though he would never willingly sub- 

 scribe to the rigidly instinctive means by which it is ob- 

 tained. In the evolution of mind-matter- energy substance an 

 excessive dependence on instinct leads the organisms which 

 possess it into blind alleys. 



In the evolution of the social insects we have intermediate 

 stages and varying degrees of the organization of societies 

 represented in still living forms, notably in the bees. To- 

 gether with a survey of the situation among mammals, a 

 continuous process is revealed from the vague collections of 

 protozoa to the elaborate societies of insects and men. There 

 is a slow accumulation of social tendencies, nowhere show- 

 ing a line of demarcation on the far side of which it may be 

 said, "This is presocial." The social tendency is obvious in 

 all animals and for that matter, to some extent even in plants. 

 Some of these societies show a very high degree of altruism 

 in the individual members. Instincts are evolved which pro- 

 duce automatic and stereotyped behavior— not always desir- 

 able from an anthropocentric point of view. Obviously, 

 even in the evolution of societies, nature tends to drift into 

 blind alleys. Complete altruism and the consequent loss of 

 individuality, at least in low organisms, often lead to such 

 perfect adaptation that there is no pressure toward evolu- 

 tionary change. At the other extreme, no altruism in the 



