452 NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec. 



that, let Professor Drummond study his divided cells for ever so long, 

 he will never be able to tell us which is the Self and which is the Other — 



For each of them is born a twin, 

 And not a soul knows which. 



Or what will the biologist say when, to impress upon us his idea that 

 all sociability depends on Sex, Professor Drummond writes, " There 

 is no instance in Nature of Division of Labour being brought to such 

 extreme specialisation " as in the evolution of Sex ? He will remind 

 us of the colonies of jelly-fish, in which some individuals do nothing 

 but swim, others nothing but eat, others nothing but produce their 

 kind, while one serves as a swollen bladder or float to support the 

 whole colony ; or of the coral-like colonies, where some individuals 

 are mouths and some are only fingers to feed the mouths ; or of the 

 sea-mats, in which some of the polyps in a colony are nothing but 

 tweezers to hold on to the food, while the other individuals eat it ; 

 or if colonial animals be put out of court, he will adduce the ants, 

 with their castes of soldiers, workers and the rest, and the bees, with 

 workers and drones and a single queen. All this specialisation has 

 nothing to do with Sex, and yet in many cases Mr. Drummond's very 

 words are applicable; each individual has " so entirely lost the power 

 of performing the whole function that, even with so great a thing at 

 stake as the continuance of the species, one could not discharge it." 



This last quotation and the criticism of it that any biologist 

 might be expected to offer, lead us directly to Mr. Drummond's main 

 argument, " the fundamental omission," as he calls it, from all 

 previous theories of the world, and also show us how greatly 

 Mr. Drummond has overstated his case. We are told in the first 

 place that all except a few powerful intellects, such as " Le Conte, 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer, Romanes, Miss Buckley, and Prince Kropot- 

 kin," have taken the Struggle for Life to be the all-important factor 

 in the Evolution of living beings. Drummond (let us drop the 

 unnecessary " Mr.") insists that the Struggle for the Life of Others 

 is equally important. The Struggle for Life is connected with the 

 function of Nutrition, with the struggle for food, which alone has 

 been considered heretofore. The Struggle for the Life of Others 

 depends absolutely on the function of Reproduction. This great 

 discovery, which is to " readjust the accents," must have occurred to 

 Drummond very shortly after reading a book, not altogether unknown, 

 entitled "The Evolution of Sex," and written by those original 

 thinkers and writers, Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. To 

 insinuate, or even to suppose, that our leading writers on these 

 subjects have overlooked the principle of altruism throughout the 

 animal kingdom, evidences a remarkable state of mind. Everyone 

 has long recognised it, and everyone would be prepared to grant to 

 the various actions of animals grouped around reproduction, whether 

 the attraction of the male to the female, or the tending of the 

 offspring by the mother, a large share in the fostering of an altruistic 



