134 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 'chap. 



which claims the entire earth for its domain is truly a 

 dominating and consequently superior species. Such 

 is the human species, which represents the culminating 

 point of the evolution of the vertebrates. But such also 

 are, in the series of the articulate, the insects and in partic- 

 ular certain hymenoptera. It has been said of the ants 

 that, as man is lord of the soil, they are lords of the sub-soil. 



On the other hand, a group of species that has appeared 

 late may be a group of degenerates; but, for that, some 

 special cause of retrogression must have intervened. 

 By right, this group should be superior to the group from 

 which it is derived, since it would correspond to a more 

 advanced stage of evolution. Now man is probably 

 the latest comer of the vertebrates; 1 and in the insect 

 series no species is later than the hymenoptera, unless 

 it be the lepidoptera, which are probably degenerates, 

 living parasitically on flowering plants. 



So, by different ways, we are led to the same conclusion. 

 The evolution of the arthropods reaches its culminating 

 point in the insect, and in particular in the hymenoptera, 

 as that of the vertebrates in man. Now, since instinct 

 is nowhere so developed as in the insect world, and in no 

 group of insects so marvelously as in the hymenoptera, it 

 may be said that the whole evolution of the animal king- 

 dom, apart from retrogressions towards vegetative life, 

 has taken place on two divergent paths, one of which led 

 to instinct and the other to intelligence. 



1 This point is disputed by M. Rene 1 Quinton, who regards the car- 

 nivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subse- 

 quent to man (R. Quinton, L'Eau de mer milieu organique, Paris, 1904, 

 p. 435). We may say here that our general conclusions, although 

 very different from M. Quinton's, are not irreconcilable with them; 

 for if evolution has really been such as we represent it, the vertebrates 

 must have made an effort to maintain themselves in the most favor- 

 able conditions of activity — the very conditions, indeed, which life 

 had chosen in the beginning. 



