24 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. i 



is kept together by bonds of such a singular char- 

 acter, that the attempt to perfect society after 

 his fashion would run serious risk of loosening 

 them. 



Social organization is not peculiar to men. 

 Other societies, such as those constituted by bees 

 and ants, have also arisen out of the advantage of 

 co-operation in the struggle for existence; and 

 their resemblances to, and their differences from, 

 human society are alike instructive. The society 

 formed by the hive bee fulfils the ideal of the com- 

 munistic aphorism "to each according to his 

 needs, from each according to his capacity." With- 

 in it, the struggle for existence is strictly limited. 

 Queen, drones, and workers have each their 

 allotted sufficiency of food; each performs the 

 function assigned to it in the economy of the hive, 

 and all contribute to the success of the whole co- 

 operative society in its competition with rival col- 

 lectors of nectar and pollen and with other ene- 

 mies, in the state of nature without. In the same 

 sense as the garden, or the colony, is a work of 

 human art, the bee polity is a work of apiarian 

 art, brought about by the cosmic process, work- 

 ing through the organization of the hymenop- 

 terous type. 



Now this society is the direct product of an 

 organic necessity, impelling every member of 

 it to a course of action which tends to the good 

 of the whole. Each bee has its duty and none 



