178 Scientific Sophisms. 



correlated with the sterile condition of certain members 

 of the community, has been advantageous to the com- 

 munity ; consequently the fertile males and females of 

 the same community flourished, and transmitted to their 

 fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members, 

 having the same modification. And I believe this process 

 has been repeated, until that prodigious amount of dif- 

 ference between the fertile and sterile females of the same 

 species has been produced, which we see in many social 

 insects." 1 



But the very existence of "the community " 

 (in the case of the honey-bees, for example) 

 depends upon the specific arrangements of the 

 present polity and constitution. Alter these 

 arrangements, and the polity is at an end ; " the 

 community" exists no longer. If, therefore, at 

 any time, all the females were fertile, as this 

 explanation implies that they once were, then 

 " the community " did not exist ; and its opera- 

 tions, however " slight," in " modification of 

 structure, or instinct," at a time when it was 

 non-existent, are unimaginable, except in 

 Utopia. 



If only they were imaginable, the " scientific 

 imagination " would not lack exercise. We 

 should in that case have to imagine that when 

 the tertile females were transforming not them- 

 selves but their posterity into sterile members 



1 " Origin of Species," p. 260. 



