INADEQUACY OF NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 663 



of this supposed cause, but will leave it to be dealt with by im- 

 plication a few pages in advance, where the general hypothesis of 

 panmixia will be reconsidered. 



And now, at length, we are prepared for dealing with Professor 

 Weismann's crucial case — with his alleged disproof that co-adapta- 

 tion of co-operative parts results from inheritance of acquired 

 characters, because in the case of the Amazon-ants, it has arisen 

 where the inheritance of acquired characters is impossible. For 

 after what has been said, it will be manifest that the whole ques- 

 tion is begged when it is assumed that this co-adaptation has 

 arisen since there existed among these ants an organized social 

 state. Unquestionably this organized social state pre-supposes a 

 series of modifications through which it has been reached. It 

 follows, then, that there can be no rational interpretation without 

 a preceding inquiry concerning that earlier state in which there 

 were no castes, but only males and females. What kinds of 

 individuals were the ancestral ants — at first solitary, and then 

 semi-social ? They must have had marked powers of offence and 

 defence. Of predacious creatures, it is the more powerful which 

 form societies, not the weaker. Instance human races. Nations 

 originate from the relatively warlike tribes, not from the rela- 

 tively peaceful tribes. Among the several types of individuals 

 forming the existing ant community, to which, then, did the 

 ancestral ants bear the greatest resemblance ? They could not 

 have been like the queens, for these, now devoted to egg-laying, 

 are unfitted for conquest. They could not have been like the 

 inferior class of workers, for these, too, are inadequately armed 

 and lack strength. Hence they must have been most like these 

 Amazon-ants or soldier-ants, which now make predatory excur- 

 sions — which now do, in fact, what their remote ancestors did. 

 What follows ? Their co-adapted parts have not been produced 

 by the selection of variations within the ant-community, such as 

 we now see it. They have been inherited from the pre-social and 

 early social types of ants, in which the co- adaptation of parts had 

 been effected by inheritance of acquired characters. It is not 

 that the soldier-ants have gained these traits ; it is that the other 

 castes have lost them. Early arrest of development causes ab- 

 sence of them in the inferior workers ; and from the queens 

 they have slowly disappeared by inheritance of the effects of 

 disuse. For, in conformity with ordinary facts of development, 

 we may conclude that in a larva v/hich is being so fed as that the 

 development of the reproductive organs is becoming pronounced, 

 there will simultaneously commence arreet in the development of 

 those organs which are not to be used. There are abundant 

 proofs that along with rapid growth of some organs others abort. 

 And if these inferences are true, ihen Professor Weismann's argu- 

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