212 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



that are exactly alike, the queens and the workers 

 with their various widely-different instincts. That 

 the instincts of the workers could have been pro- 

 duced suddenly by a change of food and cell is beyond 

 anything that has ever been claimed for natural selec- 

 tion; and, in fact, there is no possibility for this law 

 to act since the principle of heredity is excluded. 

 Whatever might be the instincts of any generation of 

 workers they could not be transmitted, nor is there 

 any conceivable means by which these instincts could 

 so affect the queens and drones that they could, in 

 cousequence thereof, produce other workers possess- 

 ing still more highly developed instincts. The theory 

 of evolution, it seems to me, must make this latter 

 claim, and yet I know of nothing to support it. 



The instincts of the working bees could not have 

 all been evolved at once, for they are too numerous; 

 nor could they have been evolved one by one, for each 

 is essential to the existence of the community. 



A colony of bees is not like a community of civil- 

 ized human beings in whom many of the wants are 

 artificial, and which may remain unsupplied, with 

 simply a certain amount of discomfort, but the wants 

 which the instincts of bees supply are imperative, 

 and, therefore, the instincts themselves, as a whole, 

 are necessary to the existence of the bees. 



Their instincts are all linked together as a necessary 

 chain, so that if one should fail the community would 

 perish. Each kind of work is perfectly done, and 

 yet the workers are totally unconscious as to what 

 will be the results of their labors. For the most part 

 they work for future generations of their colony, and 

 not for themselves, and yet they are as careful and 

 diligent as if they were guided by the highest intelli- 

 gence and the most selfish motives. 



There is nothing more wonderful and mysterious in 



