146 Evolution and Adaptation 
very interesting, as it proves that with animals, as with 
plants, any amount of modification may be effected by the 
accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous variations, 
which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit 
having been brought into play. For peculiar habits confined 
to the workers or sterile females, however long they might 
be followed, could not possibly affect the males and fertile 
females, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised 
that no one has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case 
of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited 
habit, as advanced by Lamarck.” 
We may dissent at once from Darwin’s statement which, 
he thinks, “proves that any amount of modification may be 
affected by the accumulation of numerous slight variations 
which are in any way profitable without exercise or habit 
having been brought into play’’; we may dissent if for no 
other reason than that this begs the whole point at issue, and 
is not proven. It does not follow because in some colonies 
all intermediate stages of neuters exist, that in other colo- 
nies, where no such intermediate stages are present, these 
have been slowly weeded out by natural selection, causing 
to disappear all colonies slightly below the mark. It is this 
that begs the question. Because we can imagine that 
intermediate stages between the different castes may have 
been present, it neither follows that such fluctuating varia- 
tions have been the basis for the evolution of the more 
sharply defined types, nor that the imagined advantage of 
such a change would have led through competition to the 
extermination of the other colonies. However much we 
may admire the skill with which Darwin tried to meet this 
difficulty, let us not put down the results to the good of the 
theory, but rather repeat once more Darwin’s own words at 
the end of this chapter, to the effect that the facts do not 
strengthen the theory. 
