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CHAPTER XII, 



GOVERNMENT OF INSECT COMMUNITIES 



THE points of analogy between the forms of human 

 and of insect government are much fewer and slighter 

 than they have been represented by fanciful and in- 

 accurate writers; for, among the termites, the ants, 

 the wasps, and the bees, though we find their asso- 

 ciations denominated monarchies and republics, they 

 exhibit but little of what is usually understood by 

 those terms, though the bonds of union arising from 

 mutual assistance and protection are much the same. 

 The chief coincidences which appear obvious are 

 between the insect communities and certain very arti- 

 ficial and unnatural forms of society among mankind. 

 Thus the great importance of the division of labour, 

 as an instrument of civilizing men in a savage state, 

 probably gave rise to the institution of castes in India 

 and in ancient Egypt*, and to the singular military 

 state of Sparta, which bears the nearest resemblance 

 to insect communities of any other on record. Some 

 ancient legislators, indeed, carried into rigid practice 

 the doctrine maintained by some modern visionaries, 

 that all men at birth are equal in faculties ; and 

 therefore, like a piece of clay, of which a potter can 

 make " one vessel to honour and another to dis- 

 honour," men might be moulded at the will of their 

 instructors into priests, soldiers, herdsmen, agricul- 

 turists, or artisans, as in Egypt, according to Di- 

 odorus ; or into philosophers, cultivators, herdsmen, 

 * Herodotus, ii. and iii. j Diod. Sic. i.; and Strabo, xvii. 



