THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN 91 



number of the Quadrumana, primeval meli, and even their 

 apelike progenitors, probably lived in society. With 

 strictly social animals, natural selection sometimes acts on 

 the individual, through the preservation of variations which 

 are beneficial to the community. A community which in- 

 cludes a large number of well-endowed individuals increases 

 in number, and is victorious over other less favored ones, 

 even although each separate member gains no advantage 

 over the others of the same community. Associated insects 

 have thus acquired many remarkable structures, which are 

 of little or no service to the individual, such as the pollen- 

 collecting apparatus, or the sting of the worker-bee, or the 

 great jaws of soldier-ants. - With the higher social animals 

 I am not aware that any structure has been modified solely 

 for the good of the community, though some are of second- 

 ary service to it. For instance, the horns of ruminants and 

 the great canine teeth of baboons appear to have been ac- 

 quired by the males as weapons for sexual strife, but they 

 are used in defence of the herd or troop. In regard to cer- 

 tain mental powers the case, as we shall see in the fifth chap- 

 ter, is wholly difEerent; for these faculties have been chiefly, 

 or even exclusively, gained for the benefit of the commu- 

 nity, and the individuals thereof have at the same time 

 gained an advantage indirectly. 



It has often been objected to such views as the foregoing, 

 that man is one of the most helpless and defenceless crea- 

 tures in the world ; and that during his early and less well- 

 developed condition he would have been still more helpless. 

 The Duke of Argyll, for instance, insists" that "the human 

 frame has diverged from the structure of brutes, in the direc- 

 tion of greater physical helplessness and weakness. That is 

 to say, it is a divergence which of all others it is most im- 

 possible to ascribe to mere natural selection." He adduces 

 the naked and unprotected state of the body, the absence 

 of great teeth or claws for defence, the small strength and 



96 "Primeval Man," 1869, p. 66. 



