THE ANT-COLONY AS AN ORGANISM Al 
has been retained although everybody knows that these colonies 
represent a form of society very different from our own, a kind of 
communistic anarchy, in which there is ‘‘neither guide, overseer 
nor ruler,” as Solomon correctly observed. In this respect too, the 
colony is essentially the same as the personal organism, at least 
in the opinion of those who do not feel compelled to assume the 
existence of a ‘soul’ in the scholastic sense. For it is clear, that to 
primitive thinkers the soul was supposed to bear the same rela- 
tion to the person as the Baovrebs to the insect colony and the 
king to the human state. This supposition is still held though in 
a more subtle form, by writers of the present day. Some of these, 
like Maeterlinck, clothe the postulated controlling agency in a. 
mystical or poetic garb and call it the ‘spirit of the hive.’ The 
following passage from the Belgian poet’s charming account of 
the honey-bee will serve to illustrate this method of meeting the 
problem: 
What is this ‘spirit of the hive’—where does it reside? It is not like 
the special instinct that teaches the bird to construct its well planned 
nest, and then seek other skies when the day for migration returns. 
Nor is it a kind of mechanical habit of the race, or blind craving for life, 
that will fling the bees upon any wild hazard the moment an unfore- 
seen event shall derange the accustomed order of phenomena. On the 
contrary, be the event never so masterful, the ‘spirit of the hive’ still 
will follow it, step by step, like an alert and quickwitted slave, who is 
able to derive advantage even from his master’s most dangerous orders. 
It disposes pitilessly of the wealth and the happiness, the liberty and 
life, of all this winged people; and yet with discretion, as though governed 
itself by some great duty. It regulates day by day the number of births, 
and contrives that these shall strictly accord with the number of flowers 
that brighten the country-side. It decrees the queen’s deposition or 
warns her that she must depart; it compels her to bring her ownrivals into 
the world, and rears them royally, protecting them from their mother’s 
political hatred. So, too, in accordance with the generosity of the flowers, 
the age of the spring, and the probable dangers of the nuptial flight 
will it permit or forbid the first-born of the virgin princesses to slay in 
their cradles her younger sisters, who are singing the song of the queens. 
At other times, when the season wanes, and flowery hours grow shorter, 
it will command the workers themselves to slaughter the whole imperial 
