276 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



to reason; while the causes of the social problems in mankind 

 depend in great part on unreasoning conduct with respect to 

 the establishment of families, and for the rest on the burden 

 of idlers in the state. 



In the preceding the origin of the sexually imperfect 

 workers in the communities of humble-bees and bees — and 

 the same will hold for the social wasps and ants — has been 

 ascribed to deficiency of nourishment. The question now 

 arises : Is this development accidental, or can we recognise 

 in its beginnings the evidence of reflection in the animals 

 which form the family or state ? Obviously the latter 

 alternative must decisively be affirmed. The animals, when 

 they founded families or states, must have seen the advantage 

 of several members living together, the fruitfulness of co- 

 operation. The bees, for instance, must also have seen that 

 the gathering of stores for the winter was useful to them. 

 In the explanation of this forethought chance is perhaps not 

 to be excluded : it may be that in exceptionally favourable 

 summers the animals gathered unusually abundant stores, so 

 that at least a part of them, instead of perishing in autumn, 

 survived the winter with the queen, and these were able then 

 in the following spring to go to work again at once. Selection 

 cannot here have had much influence, since the workers do 

 not reproduce. In order to make these favourable conditions 

 constant, insight and reflection oii the part of the animals, 

 and inheritance of these faculties, were necessary. Whereby 

 it is to be borne in mind that the queen-bee originally collected 

 and built along with the rest, and that she must have trans- 

 mitted to her offspring the experience thus acquired. It 

 might be objected to this, and pure Darwinism will make the 

 objection, that the instinct of laying in a store might have 

 arisen merely because the queens, who happened to be the 

 most industrious collectors, survived those which were less 

 industrious, and so at length a race arose which laid in a 



