326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or bee doing anything for itself alone, or performing any act which is 

 not intended for the good of the community as a whole. Selfishness, 

 so far as the home community is concerned, seems to have vanished, 

 and labor and life are freely given for the good of this great whole, 

 with no evident display of any thought of individual comfort or 

 aggrandizement. 



The communities of termites are communal in an equally com- 

 plete sense, and seem to have utterly lost the selfish sentiment which 

 is the ruling agency with solitary animals. With the beavers com- 

 munalism has stopped somewhat short of this complete stage. They 

 possess their dams and canals in common, and labor together in all 

 the needs of out-door life. But they have not advanced to the stage 

 of a common home, their habits rendering this impossible, or nearly 

 so ; and, though they seek food in common, each lodge lays up its 

 own private stores. Yet their interests are so largely in common that 

 they stand distinctly separate in this respect from the ordinary social 

 vertebrates, and fairly belong to the communal class, in company with 

 their insect analogues. 



There is one further interesting and suggestive feature in these 

 communal groups of animals, whose significance will be apparent when 

 we come to consider the conditions of human communities. This is 

 that they are family aggregates. The indefinite association of the 

 social animals has become a strictly family association in the communal 

 animals. This is not very clearly displayed in the beavers. Yet with 

 them the inmates of each lodge probably belong to a single family, 

 and form a group within the larger group. And the community as a 

 whole may be descended from a single ancestor, like the members of 

 the patriarchal family among men. 



With the ants, bees, and termites this family association has gone 

 much further, and each community constitutes a single family. Di- 

 vision of labor has proceeded to such an extent that the egg-bearing 

 function is confined to one or a few members of the community, while 

 all the sexual individuals beyond these perish. This princijile has 

 gone farthest with the bees, who permit but one female to develop for 

 the use of each swarm, and who mercilessly destroy all the males, as 

 soon as they become a burden on the community. 



Thus it is evident that the conditions of communal life among 

 animals can not fairly be claimed as merely advanced instances of 

 socialism. They differ not only in regard to degree of community of 

 interests, but also in displaying a new and distinct principle of asso- 

 ciation. The social group is a vague one, the communal a strictly 

 defined one, which has gradually grown up in the midst of the older 

 group and finally replaced it. Alike in ants, bees, and rodents, species 

 exist in various stages of association, between the solitary and the 

 communal, and could we trace all the steps of development we should 

 undoubtedly perceive solitary animals gradually adopting social rela- 



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