Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/343

Rh lost. They are unseen by others, and thee experience of each dies with it. For, as we well know, it is only the general, not the special powers of the mind that are transmitted by heredity. No child is born with the special knowledge of its parents, though it may possess all the intellectual tendencies and powers of its parents. Only when some action is repeated generation after generation does it produce so strong an impress upon the intellect as to be hereditarily transmitted. In this case we have the inheritance of an instinct, or strong special mental tendency.

It is evident that among social animals acts of special shrewdness performed by any individual are likely to be seen and may be imitated by others. In such cases an educational is added to the hereditary method of intellectual transmission. Any such acts, if of special value to the community, may be very frequently repeated, and if the community be long kept together it may make important steps of progress in this method along. When, again, communities pass from the social to the communal phase of association the influence above mentioned must act with much greater vigor. For the members of communal are much more closely associated than those of social groups. They work more together, and are brought into more intimate association in all the details of life. It is claimed by some writers that the young actually go to school to the old, and are specially taught the duties of the hive and the ant-hill. In addition to this there is much reason to believe that the communities of communal animals are often continuous for a very long period of time. The ant city does not die out with one generation, but may continue in existence through an indefinite number of generations. The bee family sends out its annual swarms, but the young before this migration are old enough to have been taught all the duties of bee-life. Thus the special habits of a single original hive may be transmitted, in the educational method, to an indefinite number of much later hives. Parallel conditions are known to exist among the beavers. The condition is similar to that of an overcrowded human community, whose younger members migrate in search of a new home, but not until they have learned all the arts of the parental community.

Communalism, therefore, has its special value as an aid to the transmission of knowledge and useful habits through teaching and