SOCIAL LIFE 301 



to the gratification of lustful appetites, and the maintenance of 

 the household of wives and their children. 



If monogamous birds and mammals live together in societies 

 (e.g., crows, herons, martins, finches, beavers), they form settle- 

 ments, or colonies, which often last for years, and by gradually 

 enlarging may in time grow to a great size. Polygamous 

 animals (ruminants, ungulates and apes) form flocks, herds or 

 troops under the leadership of the oldest and most experienced 

 of their males, from which, as their membership increases, off- 

 shoots break away under some younger leader and in turn 

 grow into larger flocks or herds. 



The community-life of certain species of insects is remark- 

 able. Their so-called states prove on closer observation not 

 to be states in the human sense of the word, but only over- 

 grown families formed by the gradual development of a large 

 nest from a small one by increase of the brood. 1 In all honey- 

 bees, wasps and hornets there exists, in addition to the males 

 and females, a sexless class of workers, in reality undeveloped 

 females. The industry in such hives is, generally speaking, the 

 same, but the division of labour is much stricter in a bee-hive. 



In ant-states there are similarly fertile (winged) males and 

 females and wingless workers (undeveloped females). The 

 differentiation goes even further among the termites, for they 

 have, in addition to workers, soldiers with exceptionally de- 

 veloped jaws. 



The communal life and the separate household of the social 

 hymenoptera may be explained as the result of a gradually 

 acquired habit reproduced in every succeeding colony by 

 hereditary transmission. The government of these hives has 

 reached to such a pitch of social instinct that they have been 

 given the name of states, and a monarchical constitution has 

 been attributed to the bees, while the ants are held to be 

 republicans ; nevertheless, these instinctive, unvarying arrange- 

 ments, although resembling the constitutions of human-states, 

 are not really comparable to them. 



Turning to the primitive social arrangements amongst men, 

 we start from the family, or confederation of families, who in 

 part thrust out their offspring and in part live in union under 

 1 Wundt, loc. cit., pp. 411-22. 



