158 



RHYTHM 



It thus comes about that the whole wasp protoplasm, or the 

 real living matter, is throughout the winter months tucked 

 away in the bodies of the queens which are hanging by their 

 teeth in some remote cranny. In her body, and in her body 

 alone, is the potentiality of the wasps' nest, and should she 

 perish next year's wasps' nest perishes with her. This, indeed, 

 often happens, especially during a mild winter with snaps of 

 really cold weather. 



Similar periodicities occur in human societies. Great 

 civilizations have been time after time evolved. From the 



Fig. 55. Polisfes tepidus, belonging to the same famOy as the Wasp, and nest. 



humblest origins they have reached a height which we to-day 

 are only just beginning to appreciate; then gradually they 

 have crumbled away and disappeared. The civilizations of 

 Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Crete and Arabia, the great societies 

 of Mexico and Central America have passed away, and the 

 story of their passing serves to-day as a reminder of the fate 

 which has hitherto overtaken all human civilizations. One 

 of these days they may, in the cycle of time, recover and 

 enter upon a new period of prosperity, as Italy has done .after 

 the collapse of the Roman Empire. But the laws which 

 govern the periodicity of civilization have yet to be discovered. 

 The great French and English historian Hippolyte Taine 

 believed that the laws of civilization may be discovered by a 



