124 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



bee does not flit erratically from flower to flower, but shows herself, 

 as Darwin said, "a g(X)d botanist". Once settled do\sTi to tapping 

 a profitable and abundant species, she may keep to this for the 

 whole of her outdoor life — perhaps three weeks — without ever 

 entering another kind of blossom. R5sch's study is interesting in 

 proving a regular succession of functions, an obviously profitable 

 arrangement when there is a continuous sequence of fresh offspring. 

 The study is also of interest in correcting the impression one is 

 apt to get of the tyranny of instinct. We suppose that it is partly 

 by a developmental sequence of instincts, and partly by hive- 

 conventions, that the worker-bee is prompted to one kind of activity 

 after another. 



(V) A hfth advantage of the social habit is tliat it fosters the 

 evolution of intelligence in the big-brained types and of instinctive 

 efticiency in the small-brained types. As the evolution of instinctive 

 behaviour remains very puzzling, we shall confine ourselves mainly 

 to instances of intelligence. In regard to instinctive behaviour, the 

 Lamarckian view refers it to a racial entailment of tlie individually 

 enregistered results of tentatives and exix^riments, while the 

 Danviniim view starts from germinal variations in the nervous 

 system, which are tested in the individual's unceasing experimental 

 initiatives, and are thus subjected to natural selection. In both cases 

 the change in the nervous system may be supposed to be correlated 

 with some psychical change, for there are many instances of instinc- 

 tive behaviour of which it is difficult to make sense if we persist in 

 regarding them as no more than chains of reflex actions. In mamy 

 cases it seems legitimate to suppose that the instinctive behaviour 

 is backed by purposive endeavour and suffused with awareness, 

 often accompanied by feeling. But the important consideration here 

 is this, that an incipient social organisation, on the instinctive line 

 of evolution, will, ipso facto, afford suitable sieves for winnowing 

 new variations of the same general nature. 



Perhaps the case is clearer when we deal with societies on an 

 intelligent basis, i.e. with evidence of individual inferential learning. 

 Our proposition is that social inter-relations would favour the 

 advance of intelligence. This is suggested when we mention monkeys, 

 beavers, wolves, and wild horses among mammals, or rooks, cranes, 

 and parrots among birds. The names suggest some correlation 

 between nimble brains and the social habit. It may be objected, 

 however, that this is arguing in a circle. With one breath we say 

 that a certain fineness of brain is a precondition of sociality, and 

 then with another we say that societies make animals clever. But 

 we Ix'licve that it is just in these virtuous circles that evolution has 

 worked. Well endowed animals with kin-sympathy and keen wits 

 form an inrii;i<>nt society, but the .social framework acts as a sieve 

 in which further variations in the direction of increased sociality 



