i yo HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



ending in the higher plants in the vegetable world, and 

 in the animal kingdom reaching on the one hand the 

 highly developed instinct of ants and bees, and on the 

 other the transcendent intelligence of mankind. 



It seems fair to infer that of these three courses the 

 highest development is that on the intellectual side 

 which culminates in man : not necessarily because of 

 our feelings of superiority they might well be shared 

 by ants and bees had they conscious powers of com- 

 parison but for two definite reasons. Firstly, man 

 keeps bees for his own use, allowing them to multiply 

 at his discretion, and staying their reproduction when 

 it seems to him good. We have not yet heard of a 

 man-farm kept by bees. Secondly, wonderful as is the 

 economy of the bees' commonwealth, it does not show 

 that power of growth and development given to man 

 by his intellectual power over tools, machinery and 

 economic organization. All individual initiative seems 

 lost in the rigid socialism of the hive. Moreover, once 

 their instincts had developed the effective organization 

 in which they now live, it is probable that the numbers 

 of wild bees which the world would support became 

 strictly limited by external conditions, just like those of 

 any other species of plant or animal. The number of 

 mankind is not so limited. Any intellectual advance, 

 when applied to economics, increases the means of sub- 

 sistence, and the possible number of human beings. 



It might be replied that mankind is only now in 

 the preliminary stage passed through by bees long ages 

 ago, when they were developing in instinct and con- 

 sequently increasing in number. Our limit, like theirs, 

 will be reached when our commercial state reaches a 



