Our Six-footed Rivals . 
437 
mention the burying-beetle and some of the dung-beetles, 
both sexes of whom labour conjointly to find and inter the 
food in which the eggs are to be deposited. Generally 
speaking, moreover, the young insedt never knows — never 
even sees — its parents, who in most cases have died before 
it has emerged from the egg. Among non-social insedts the 
earwig and a few other Orthoptera form the chief exceptions. 
Where a regularly organised society, a nation, or tribe exists 
among annulose animals, it is not formed by the coalescence 
of families to a higher unity. The family, if it can be said 
to exist at all, is conterminous and identical with the nation. 
This absence of a something whose claims are felt by all 
ordinary men to be stronger than those of the State has 
rendered the successful organisation of the “ Commune ” 
feasible among ants, and among other social Hymenoptera, 
such as bees, wasps, &c. With them the State has no 
rival, and absorbs all the energies which in human society 
the individual devotes to the interests of his family. We 
thus see that theorists on social reform have been, from 
their own point of view, logically consistent in attacking the 
institution of marriage and the whole system of domestic 
life : they have sought to abolish the great impediment to 
the Commune, and to approximate man to the condition of 
our six-footed rivals, and to constitute society not as here- 
tofore of molecules, but of atoms. 
But it is not enough to show that the failure of Com- 
munism among mankind and its success among certain 
Hymenopterous insedts are due to the existence and the 
power of the family in the former case, and to its absence 
in the latter. We have yet to enquire into the wherefore of 
so important a distinction. Vertebrate society, where it 
exists at all, is founded on family life, because every verte- 
brate animal is sexual, and as such is attradted to some 
individual of the opposite sex by the strongest instindt of 
its nature, that of self-preservation alone excepted. Inver- 
tebrate society, where it exists in perfection, as among the 
Hymenoptera, is not formed by a union of families, because 
the great majority of Hymenopterous individuals (in the 
social species) are non-sexual, neuter, incapable of any 
private or domestic attachments, and devoted to the com- 
munity alone. To attempt, without the existence of such 
an order, to introduce the social arrangements of the ant 
— i.e., Communism — among mankind is as futile and as 
irrational as the endeavour to fly without wings : the very 
primary conditions for success are wanting. 
It may not be amiss to examine a little further in the 
