Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/344

332. It also induces the incessant reiteration of acts that have proved beneficial to the community, until the tendency to perform these acts becomes so strong that it is hereditarily transmitted. In other words, it tends to produce instincts. In fact, in the case of animals of low intellectual vigor, like the ants and bees, it seems probable that new habits, of special value to a community, grow up only by minute increments, and through long periods of time. Each when gained becomes repeated through innumerable generations, and finally becomes an instinct, capable of hereditary transmission. In this way animals of very slight intellectual vigor, by the educational transmission of all beneficial individual acts, may have gradually gained the diversified mental conditions of these two remarkable types.

In ant and bee communities, as at present constituted, the hereditary transmission of new arts seems at first sight impossible. Intellectual acts performed by the workers must remain unknown to the solitary female, who can only transmit the ancient instincts. It would seem as if the development of communalism had reached a point at which intellectual progress must stop. The general habits of ants and bees were probably gained during their slow evolution of communalism from socialism, and ere the sexual relations had attained their present extreme restriction. With but one female, who takes no part in the duties of home or field, and remains ignorant of any shrewd act that may be performed by a worker, it seems impossible that the existing instincts should receive any addition.

Yet this is not quite impossible, even in the present conditions of ant and bee life. Experiential development and transmission of new habits may continue indefinitely, since single communities may continue in existence, or may yield direct colonies, for indefinite periods of years. And the occasional birth of males from workers affords a possible means by which these habits may be hereditarily transmitted, since it is quite conceivable that these male children of workers may become the parents of new communities. In bee communities the occasional transformation of a worker into a queen affords a direct means for the transmission of worker characteristics. The case is closely parallel to that of the transmission of knowledge in human communities, though in the latter hereditary transmission is of limited scope, and education is the great agent in the communication of knowledge.

Special attention has here been given to this question, as it is one that has excited much comment and debate, and the thoughts here advanced may not be without their interest and value. I would but repeat what is above said, that the remarkable institutions of ant and bee communities do not indicate any intellectual superiority to solitary animals in the members of these communities, but simply a much superior method for the transmission of intellectual results. And to this may be added the final conclusion that while ant and bee communalism has now reached a stage that must tend in great measure to check the