PROLEGOMENA 63 



sees in the latter, simply the perfection of an automatic 

 mechanism, hammered out by the blows of the struggle 

 for existence upon the progeny of the former, during 

 long ages of constant variation. 



x. 



I see no reason to doubt that, at its origin, human 

 society was as much a product of organic necessity as 

 that of the bees. 16 The human family, to begin with, 

 rested upon exactly the same conditions as those which 

 gave rise to similar associations among animals lower 

 in the scale. Further, it is easy to see that every in- 

 crease in the duration of the family ties, with the result- 

 ing co-operation of a larger and larger number of de- 

 scendants for protection and defence, would give the 

 families in which such modification took place a dis- 

 tinct advantage over the others. And, as in the hive, 

 the progressive limitation of the struggle for existence 

 between the members of the family would involve in- 

 creasing efficiency as regards outside competition. 



But there is this vast and fundamental difference be- 

 tween bee society and human society. In the former, 

 the members of the society are each organically predes- 

 tined to the performance of one particular class of func- 

 tions only. If they were endowed with desires, each 

 could desire to perform none but those offices for which 

 its organization specially fits it; and which, in view of 

 the good of the whole, it is proper it should do. So long 

 as a new queen does not make her appearance, rivalries 

 and competition are absent from the bee polity. 



Among mankind, on the contrary, there is no such 

 predestination to a sharply defined place in the social 

 16 Collected Essays, vol. v., Prologue, pp. 5o-54 



