ii6o LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



Among the honey-ants of Texas there are individuals which are 

 utilised as honey-pots, but that would be impossible except in a 

 society! Among the White Ants or termites the big-jawed soldiers 

 cannot gnaw wood as the workers do, so they are fed in return for 

 their more or less military services. The drone-bees in a hive, though 

 very energetic in flying about, have lost the habit of foraging, and 

 get their food as members of the society or big family. The difference 

 between a society and a big family is one of degree. 



Some animal societies are mainly on an intelligent basis, as 

 among monkeys, horses, cattle, elephants, beavers, and rooks, while 

 others are mainly on an instinctive basis, as among ants, bees, 

 wasps, and termites. But the contrast must not be pressed too hard, 

 for beavers are sometimes children of instinct, and bees show occa- 

 sional flashes of intelligence. Human societies are partly instinctive, 

 mainly intelligent, and occasionally rational. 



Perhaps we shaU better understand the beginnings of human 

 societies if we again try to focus the advantages of social life among 

 animals, (i) Many small animals, such as ants, insignificant in 

 themselves, afford good illustrations of the adage that union is 

 strength. (2) What an individual ant or beaver could not accomplish 

 may be achieved by concerted action, as when ants combine to 

 bring a large victim to the nest, or when beavers unite in cutting 

 a canal. (3) Energy may be economised in a community, especially 

 when there is division of labour, as is so frequent among ants and 

 termites. But this division of labour becomes extreme when the 

 reproduction is mainly restricted to certain individuals, notably 

 the queens and drones of the bee-hive and the ant-hill. (4) We 

 cannot but think that it must have meant much in the evolution of 

 an animal society when there was something in the way of permanent 

 products, such as communal shelter, or store, or camp. An ant-hill, 

 a bee-hive, a termitary, a beaver's pond, must be regarded as the 

 beginning of the social heritage which has meant so much in man's 

 case. (5) Finally, there must be some degree of kin-sympathy in 

 every animal society — a "social atmosphere" in which the mental 

 and moral qualities have more chance to express themselves than in 

 the solitary mode of life. This would be most marked in the case of 

 societies on an intelligent basis, for instinctive societies are apt to 

 become too stereotyped. Communities on an intelligent basis are 

 likely to foster the growth of wits and kindly feeling, as well as the 

 anticipations of language and art. 



Why are there not more instances of social animals ? It probably 

 requires a considerable degree of kin-sympathy and brain-intricacy. 

 Mites could not form a society. There must also be a power of rapid 

 multiplication, for a small society is almost contradiction in terms. 

 Moreover there are some ways of living that preclude concerted 

 action, as in most forms of hunting and fishing. There are only two 



