BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPFXTS 1203 



By struggle good things are won; without struggle they are lost. 



Behold the life of ease, it drifts. 



The sharpened life commands its course : * 



She winnows, winnows roughly, sifts, 



To dip her chosen in her source, 



Contention is the vital force 



Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts. 



Cutting deep into the problems of modern life are the lessons of 

 Nature — the Nemesis of parasitism, for it spells degeneracy; the 

 dangers of sluggish existence, when the environment is so apt to 

 master the organism; and the risks that are run whenever Nature's 

 sifting ceases, and is not replaced by some higher form of selection. 

 A society that dispenses with sifting is working out its own doom. 



An ant-hill may be taken as an instance of one of Nature's 

 warnings. As an exhibition of social organisation, of division of 

 labour, of efficienc}^ and of instinctive self-subordination and 

 loyalty, it is admirable; but whenever we peer into it we discover 

 the seamy side. The ant-community depends on a reproductive 

 caste, the several queens and males amid the multitudinous ranks 

 of the workers in a large ant-hill. The work of the ant-hill is dis- 

 charged by a huge body of more or less sterile, sex-repressed females. 

 In a bee-hive, which is not far removed from some of the communi- 

 ties of wild bees, we observe the sterility of the great majority; the 

 short duration of adult life — about six weeks — in the summer 

 worker-bees; the presence of a large number of non-productive, 

 though by no means idle, males; the cumulative cold-shouldering 

 of these drones towards the end of the season, and the frequent 

 occurrence of a final massacre. Heaven help us from going to the 

 ants or to the bees! 



No one will suggest any facile argument from honey-bees to what 

 is often unadvisedly called the human hive, for the organisms and 

 their social bonds are utterly different; yet it seems legitimate to 

 look into Nature's great experimental station for warning and even 

 for encouragement. We might refer in further illustration to the 

 success that attends those wild animals that play, such as kittens 

 and puppies, lambs and kids, from a study of which man has learned 

 to understand more clearly the biological and psychological import- 

 ance of his own playing. Again, it is impossible not to be impressed 

 by the success that attends the small families among animals well- 

 equipped in body and mind. Types that economise in reproductivity 

 have rarely anything to fear from those that spawn. 



There is yet another way in which Natural History touches us as 

 moral agents. Ethical conduct implies control in reference to ideals, 

 and since we have no evidence that warrants us in crediting animals 



