ii62 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



animals have speech and words. But our present point is that a 

 society favours the development of means of communication. 

 These need not be vocal, for bees get news from one another by 

 smell; and in many mammals there are gestures as well as sounds. 

 When two ants stroke antennae there seems to be a mingling of 

 touch-tidings and smell-tidings. 



Of great interest in the social life of animals is the gradual appear- 

 ance of customs and conventions, what might be called "folk-ways". 

 These are based partly on the engrained promptings which have 

 become part of the racial inheritance, partly on the apprenticeship 

 that the animal may have to serve (as in worker-bees) to the tradi- 

 tional routine, and partly, no doubt, to the established division of 

 labour and to the presence of permanent products, such as the 

 termitary of the white ants with its intricate internal architecture. 

 Why does an ant seem forced to behave in such and such a way? 

 In trying to answer, we may perhaps distinguish an internal heredi- 

 tary compulsion, which prompts, for instance, the feeding of the 

 hungry, and an external or environmental compulsion imposed by 

 the nature of the home, the particular form of the quest for food, 

 and the established framework of the society, as expressed, for 

 instance, in the division of labour. Thus, as we have mentioned 

 already, the soldier white-ants have to be fed by the workers, for 

 they cannot feed themselves. 



In societies of fine-brained animals there may be the beginning 

 of something like social compulsion, something pointing onwards 

 to public opinion in mankind. Perhaps, to take a familiar instance, 

 there is some expression of this in the cold-shouldering of the drones 

 in a bee-hive. It seems to grow in intensity, and it may end in their 

 massacre towards the end of summer, though that is often rendered 

 unnecessary by a gradual reduction in numbers. 



But let us turn now to the beginnings of human societies. Here 

 we must expect to find great differences and yet great samenesses. 

 What are the great differences? In what ways does even a humble 

 human society rise high above a bee-hive or a beaver village? We 

 often hear about "the human hive" and "the instinct of the herd", 

 but these phrases tend to exaggerate the resemblances and to slur 

 over the differences. Man has language, making sentences, expressing 

 judgments; animals never rise above words. Man has reason, that is 

 to say the power of working with general ideas; animals are not 

 known to rise above intelligence. Man has in varying measure an 

 awareness of his own history, but that is beyond the animal except 

 in so far as engrained promptings form part of the inheritance. 

 Man has much more in the way of a social heritage — ^traditions, 

 customs, institutions, laws, literature, and art; though there are 

 hints of something of this sort even in an ant-hill that lasts for 

 generations. But man in his ascent has come to be more dependent 



