PART VI

SOME POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL ANIMALS

I

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE

Problem of the species in the human race—Loss of individuality in the associations of lower animals—Myxomycetes and Siphonophora—Individuality in Ascidians—Progress in the development of the individual living in a society

In the following pages I shall try to reply to the criticism on _The Nature of Man_ that in that book I only considered the individual without thinking of the interests of society or of the race. I have been reproached for having lost sight of the truth that in the general course of evolution the interests of the individual must yield to the higher interests of the community. It was asserted, in fact, that by advising orthobiosis, that is to say, the most complete cycle of human life, ending in extreme old age, I was suggesting something to the detriment of humanity as a whole.

This objection rests on a misunderstanding which it will be interesting to clear up. I think that the complete development of the individual not only would not injure the community but would be of great advantage to it. Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact that the individual has rights which must not be ignored.

In the attack on my theory many facts were brought forward which show that in the animal and vegetable kingdoms the individual is always sacrificed to the advantage of the race. There is no doubt as to this, and in the course of this book I have given exact facts bearing on it. I instanced plants such as the Agave and some Cryptogams which die as soon as they have reproduced; I have also spoken of the small female round worms (_Nematoda_) which are brutally torn in pieces and devoured by their progeny. It would be difficult to find better cases of the sacrifice of the individual to the species. The rule, however, does not apply to man, who, in this respect, stands in a special position.

Since the arrival of man, several species of animals have disappeared from the earth. Man has played a large part in the destruction of the Moa (_Aepyornis_) of Madagascar, the largest member of the class of birds. He destroyed the Dodo of the Island of Mauritius and Steller’s sea cow (_Rhytina stelleri_), a harmless relative of the Manatee, from the shores of the Aleutian Archipelago. Man is about to cause the extinction of several species of harmful carnivorous animals, such as the wolf and the bear, and possibly it will not be long before automobiles have replaced the horse, which would then become extremely rare. However, although he has destroyed so many other species, man has taken good care of himself. The progress already made by civilisation has considerably reduced our mortality. Every year, a large number of young infants are kept alive by the aid of hygiene and medicine. The decrease of war and of assassination has also played a part in maintaining the race. The position which man has acquired in the world makes it more likely that what we have to fear is too great an increase of population, and although the theory of Malthus has not been verified in all its details, it is still true that man could multiply on the face of the earth too abundantly. It is already clear that almost in the proportion that humanity stops the effusion of its blood in war, it tends to limit the propagation of the race.

As the future of the species seems to be safe, it is natural to consider in the first place that of the individual. In this respect the facts of general biology are of special interest.

Man is not the only social animal on the earth. Long before his appearance other living beings existed in organised societies. The splendid colonies of Siphonophora float on the surface of the seas, whilst in the ocean depths there are societies of corals of extraordinary variability, whilst again, on land, many kinds of insects live in highly organised societies.

This social life has been developed without external assistance, and without any code to regulate the conduct of the individuals united for a common purpose.

It will be interesting to give a slight survey of the fundamental principles of such societies; I intend to draw special attention to one of the essential points in the societies of animals, hoping to elucidate the relations between the individuals and society.

In the organisation of human society the most difficult points are the extent to which the society may encroach on the individual and the degree to which the individual may preserve his rights and his independence. Disputes on these have been interminable, and I do not propose to discuss the theories according to which an individual must be sacrificed for the good of the community to which he belongs. I shall limit myself to reviewing the fate of the individuals in societies of beings much inferior to man.

There are examples of societies composed of many individuals, even amongst living things on the borderland between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

There may be found in woods, on dead leaves or on decaying timber, minute plants resembling tiny mushrooms. These are Myxomycetes, and the visible portions are minute sacs filled with microscopical rounded bodies, known as spores. When one of the spores is moistened, there emerges a minute organism with a mobile appendage by which it can be impelled through water. A drop of water on a leaf or on a fragment of timber may be filled with numbers of these tiny swimming bodies (Fig. 21). Their free life as individuals, however, is of brief duration. When they come into contact, their bodies fuse, forming a gelatinous mass which may be quite large (Fig. 22). This mass is called a plasmodium, and is composed of a living substance which can move slowly over leaves and which exhibits streaming movements in the interior, so that the whole resembles in some respects the lava from a volcano.

The plasmodia may be regarded as societies in the constitution of which the individuality of the members has been completely sacrificed. The ideal of those philosophers who have urged that man should renounce his individuality and merge himself in the community has been realised in the fullest way at the lower end of the scale of life, at an epoch inconceivably remote from the appearance of the human race.

Amongst animals, even the most lowly, there are no societies in which the members are sacrificed so completely to the whole. Individuality is always preserved to a greater or lesser extent. Consider the polyps, colonies of which form reefs in the sea and may even become islands. These creatures live in aggregations, the members of which are incapable of living an independent life. They are united by living substance and resemble double monsters, such as Doodica and Radica, who were so much talked of some years ago when M. Doyen operated upon them. The peritoneal cavities of these twins were in free communication, and the blood-vessels were united so that the blood of the one passed freely into the body of the other. In another double monster, the two Tscheck girls, Rosa and Josepha, the intestinal tracts communicate, both leading to a common rectum. In these, who are still alive, the peritoneum is joined and there is a single urethra.

In the case of the coral polyps, the fusion of the individuals of the colony is nearly always much more complete. Each individual has its own mouth and stomach, whilst the other organs cannot be assigned to individuals but must be regarded as common to the whole.

In the swimming polyps or Siphonophora, the loss of individuality is still more remarkable. These graceful and transparent creatures, sometimes large in size, live in the sea and may appear on its surface in great numbers. They possess many whip-like filaments provided with tentacles, swimming bells and stomachs. There can be no doubt as to their colonial nature (Fig. 23), but it is difficult to decide as to whether each piece of the colony, each swimming bell, stomach and so forth, is to be regarded as an individual or an organ, different zoologists having taken different views on the question. One interpretation is that colonial life has brought with it such modifications that of each individual there remains only a single organ. Some individuals have been reduced to simple stomachs, attached to the central stem, whilst others have lost all organs except that of locomotion which has become one of the swimming bells of the colony. Other zoologists, and I myself amongst them, think that the Siphonophora are colonies of organs in which there has been as yet practically no development of individuality. A living chain of Siphonophora is simply a number of organs such as stomachs, tentacles, swimming bells and so forth, united on a common stem. I need not discuss the disputed point further, for the only matter pertinent to my argument is that in the Siphonophora the loss of individuality, the sacrifice of the parts to the whole, is not so great as in the Myxomycetes.

In support of my view, I must recall the small forms of Siphonophora known as _Eudoxia_. These are detached pieces of the common trunk which swim freely in the sea and have a remarkable structure (Fig. 24). Their mobility is due to a bell provided with strong muscular fibres. The bell is a portion of an individual which possesses organs of reproduction but which is devoid of the means to capture or digest food. These two functions are performed by a second individual which is closely united with the first. The nutrient individual has a long tentacle by which the prey is captured, and a capacious stomach in which it is digested. The products of digestion pass by channels into the reproductive individual, carrying as it were a ready-made blood. _Eudoxia_ in fact is a double being composed of an individual incapable of locomotion or of reproduction, but adapted for prehension and digestion, and of a second individual which can reproduce and which is mobile. _Eudoxia_ is an association resembling that of the blind man and the paralytic, in Florian’s fable.

Advance in the organisation of social animals is plainly incompatible with complete loss of individuality, and this becomes the more apparent the higher we reach in the scale of life. In the social Ascidians, each member retains all the organs necessary to life. Animals of the genus _Botryllus_ (Fig. 25), perhaps the most interesting of these Ascidians, occur in the form of circular colonies. The individuals which compose the colony are grouped radially around a common centre which is occupied by the cloaca. Each individual has its own mouth and digestive tube, but the latter opens into a cloaca, common to all the individuals, by which the excreta are voided. There is, in fact, a single anus, as in the case of Rosa and Josepha which I have just mentioned.

II

INSECT SOCIETIES

Social life of insects—Development and preservation of individuality in colonies of insects—Division of labour and sacrifice of individuality in some insects

Hitherto I have dealt with associations of animals the members of which are linked by an actual material bond. In the insect world there are many cases of highly developed colonies. But the organisation of insects is high, and is incompatible with the existence of actual physical connection between the members of the society.

In early stages of the development of the social instinct in bees, fully formed and similar individuals join together with the object of securing the safety of their individual lives. Sometimes they act together to drive away a common enemy, sometimes, as in winter, they cling in a mass to maintain their temperature. In such primitive societies, the young are not reared in common. It is only in much more highly developed colonies, such as those of some bees and wasps, and of ants and termites, that the chief object of the common action is care of the progeny. Such an extreme development of the colony is attained only by sacrificing the individuality of the members. There is a far-reaching division of labour, so that the queens, for instance, are mere machines for laying eggs. In hive-bees the queen can no longer judge of what is good for the colony, her intellectual functions being degenerate. She is enclosed in her cell and supported by the workers, who see in her the future of the race. In times of want the worker-bees sacrifice their own lives and give the queen the last remnants of the food-supply so that she survives them. The males are incomplete individuals and are tolerated only so long as they are required, after which the workers kill them remorselessly.

The workers, which take such pains for the well-being of the hive, are incomplete individuals. Their brains are well developed and they are well equipped with organs for making wax and collecting food, but their reproductive organs are reduced to mere vestiges incapable of fulfilling their functions.

Here then is a case of loss of individual characters increasing with the perfection of the colony. Amongst ants and termites, the social life of which arose quite independently of that of bees, the same course of events has been repeated. High intelligence and skill are confined to the workers, in which the reproductive organs are atrophied. The soldiers have powerful jaws used in defence of the camp, but they, too, are sexually incomplete. The females and males, in which the reproductive organs have attained huge proportions so that the bodies are little more than sacs containing the sexual elements, have no intelligence and very little skill.

An extremely curious specialisation, consisting in the formation of honey-bearing workers, occurs in some Mexican ants. Some of the workers of these races absorb so much honey that their bodies become swollen honey-bags. The limbs can no longer support the expanded body, and the insects, reduced to immobility, do not quit the burrows. Normal life has become impossible for these individuals, who soon die for the good of the community. When the normal workers or the sexual individuals are hungry, they approach the honey-bearers and take honey from their mouths. The honey-bearers have become no more than animated cupboards (Fig. 26).

The termites belong to quite another class of the group Insecta, but in their case a similar sacrifice of the individual to the state is practised. The females become transformed to shapeless bags of eggs. They cannot move, but remain secluded in the recesses of the “ant”-hill, where they lay as many as 80,000 eggs a day. The soldiers have become provided with jaws so enormous that these unsexed insects can perform no function other than defence of the colony.

The partial reduction of individuality in social insects never goes so far as in the cases of the lower animals I have described. It may be stated as a general rule that increase in the perfection of organisation brings with it a more or less complete preservation of individuality in the members of a community.

I shall now examine to what extent this law can be applied in the case of man.

III

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE HUMAN RACE

Human societies—Differentiation in the human race—Learned women—Habits of a bee, _Halictus quadricinctus_—Collectivist theories—Criticisms by Herbert Spencer and Nietzsche—Progress of individuality in the societies of higher beings

Social life is for the most part little developed amongst vertebrate animals. The birds and fishes which live in communities present no organisation of society even comparable with that found amongst insects. There is little advance in this respect in the case of mammals, and it is not until we come to man that highly organised societies are to be found. Man is the first vertebrate to develop an organised social life. But, whilst in the insect world, instincts are of supreme importance in the regulation of the community, there is little instinctive action in human communities. The consciousness of individuality, or egoism, is very powerful in human beings, and perhaps for that reason our ancestors made little progress in the development of social relations.

Anthropoid apes adhere in little groups or in families without any true social organisation. Love of the neighbour, or altruism, appears to be a recent and feeble human acquisition.

Although the organisation of human society is far advanced and division of labour very complete, there is no differentiation of the individuals comparable with what is found amongst insects. Although in animals so different as Siphonophora, bees, wasps, and termites the development of the community, proceeding along different lines, has brought into existence non-sexual individuals, there is no trace of this specialisation amongst human beings.

Certain abnormalities in the condition of the sexual organs are occasionally found in men and women, but these cannot be compared with the production of sexless individuals that has taken place amongst other social creatures. I cannot accept the view that we are to see something analogous to the case of worker bees in the prohibition of sexual relations imposed by some religious systems on a certain number of individuals. But in any event there is little importance in this occurrence, which is rapidly becoming rarer.

In recent times, both in Europe and the United States of America, there has been an active development of a femininist movement impelling women towards higher education. Women, no longer content with the avocations of mother and housewife, have pressed into professions such as law and medicine. There is a steady increase in the number of women who study at the Universities, and countries like Germany, which have tried to exclude women from higher studies, will soon have to yield before an irresistible pressure.

Can we regard the results of this movement as analogous to the production of sexless workers which has taken place amongst social insects? I think not. It is undoubtedly true that a certain number of young women, who, for some reason or other are unlikely to marry, devote themselves to scientific study. In these cases, however, celibacy is the cause, not the result of the increased intellectual activity. On the other hand, it must be remembered that many women students of science eventually marry. In St. Petersburg, for instance, there were 1,091 women in the Medical School; of these 80 were already married and 19 were widows. Of the remaining 992, 436 or 44 per cent. married during the course of their studies.

Observation of the femininist movement, which has lasted for more than forty years, shows that in most cases there is no tendency towards the formation of individuals resembling the infertile worker insects. Most lady doctors and learned women would like nothing better than to be the founders of a family. Even the women who have been most distinguished in the scientific world are no exception to the rule. In this relation it is very interesting to follow the details of the life of Sophie Kowalevsky, one of the most notable of learned women. In her youth, when she began to study mathematics, she would not admit that feelings of love had any importance. Later on, however, when she felt herself growing old, these sentiments awoke in her to such an extent that on the day when the prize of the Academy of Sciences was bestowed on her, she wrote to one of her friends, “I am getting innumerable letters of congratulation, but by the strange irony of fate, I have never felt so unhappy.”

The cause of this discontent reveals itself in the words which she addressed to her most intimate woman friend. “Why is it,” she said, “that no one loves me? I could give more than most women, and while the most ordinary women are loved, as for me, I am not loved.”[169]

It is, in fact, impossible to regard the celibacy of persons devoted to religion or to scientific studies as the beginning of a special organisation analogous to that of worker bees.

However, it is still probable that in the human race a special differentiation has been established for the accomplishment of different and essential functions.

The organisation of human societies has certainly not followed the path by which social insects attained the formation of sexless individuals. It much more closely resembles what has taken place in some isolated animal types. A solitary bee, named _Halictus quadricinctus_ (Fig. 27), is characterised by the fact that the female does not die when she has laid her last eggs, as generally happens amongst insects, but remains alive to cherish her offspring. This final portion of her life does not last long, and the bee cannot play the prominent part of governess in a society of insects organised by this specialisation of elderly females. In the human race the individual life lasts longer and a division of labour takes place in the fashion suggested by _Halictus quadricinctus_.

An ordinary woman ceases to be fertile at between forty and fifty years old, that is to say, at a time when, according to statistics, she has still on the average twenty years to live. During this long period, she can perform an extremely useful function in society, a function resembling that of the old mothers of _Halictus quadricinctus_, and consisting chiefly in the bringing up and education of the children. Who does not know the extraordinary devotion of grandmothers, and, as a general rule, of old women, who are extremely useful in bringing up children. And none the less, it must not be forgotten that, actually, old age begins too soon, that it is not what it ought to be under normal conditions, and that human life itself does not last nearly so long as it ought to do in ideal conditions. We may predict that when science occupies the preponderating place in human society that it ought to have, and when knowledge of hygiene is more advanced, human life will become much longer and the part of old people will become much more important than it is to-day.

The members of human society are not divided into sexual and neuter individuals as amongst insects, but the active life of every individual can be divided into two periods, the first one of productive activity, and the second of sterility but none the less devoted to work useful to the community. The essential difference between the two cases may be reduced to the contrast that whilst the individuals of which animal societies are composed are structurally incomplete, in human societies the individual preserves his integrity.

We come, then, to the result that the more highly organised a social being may be, so also the more highly developed is his individuality. It follows that amongst the theories which seek to control social life, those are the best which leave a field sufficiently wide and free for the development of individual initiative. The ideal which has been so often advocated and according to which the individual is to be sacrificed as completely as possible to society, cannot be regarded as in harmony with the general law of organic associations. Special conditions exist in social life in which great sacrifices are inevitable, but such an arrangement cannot be considered as general and permanent. We may predict that the more human beings succeed in advancing communal life, the fewer cases there will be in which the individual has to be sacrificed.

In the hope of subduing the egoism rooted in human nature, moralists have preached renunciation of individual happiness and the need of subordinating it to the good of the community. Very often such doctrine has borne little fruit, but there are cases where it has been embraced with such ardour that men and, still more, young women have been led to sacrifice their well-being for what they have taken to be the common good. However it may involve self-abnegation, there has been continued insistence on the duty of sacrificing the individual to the community.

The existing great inequalities in the distribution of wealth have revived doctrines the object of which is to redress such injustice. For more than a century, different forms of socialism have claimed to formulate rules for the amelioration of mankind. They agree in a verdict against existing conditions, but follow different paths in their proposals for the reformation of society. The varieties of socialism are so numerous that it is difficult even to define the word. Although collectivist theories have lost much of their early thoroughness, they are still far from admitting the just claims of the individuals constituting the society. At socialist assemblies and congresses the resolutions adopted frequently proclaim aggressively the sacrifice of the rights of the individual. The members of one socialist party have been seen refusing the collaboration of newspapers which are not the official organs of the party, or declining any co-operation with a government they have proscribed. In strikes organised by socialists, work is forbidden to men who ardently desire it. Recently printers have refused to set up newspapers the opinions of which they did not share, and even doctors have been known to decline to treat those belonging to another political party.

It is no new charge against collectivists that they would encroach too much on individual liberty. They reply that “in social-democratic society of the future, tyranny and oppression will be impossible. The secret of the bond will reside in a discipline totally different from the inanimate obedience of the soldier, a discipline depending on a willing submission of the individual to the group because of the common object.”[170] But such discipline and submission may go so far that the conscience of the individual is seriously offended. And so amongst the socialists themselves there has arisen a small group which declines to accept this submergence of the individual in the whole. This group is composed of anarchists, who, in the name of liberty and the individual, attack the property and sometimes the lives of their opponents.

It appears that there has been a notable evolution of collectivist theories in the century or more in which the abolition of human misery has been an accepted problem. Whilst there was formerly advocated the total abolition of private property and the establishment of phalansteries for communal life, at the present time the demand is limited to the nationalisation of the means of production, leaving housing and food to be provided by individual property.[171]

Through a publication, of M. Kautsky, one of their best known representatives, the social democrats have announced that “the nationalisation of the land does not necessarily bring with it the abolition of private dwellings. The customary attachment of the dwelling to agricultural employment will cease, but there is no reason why the peasants’ houses should become collective property.” “Modern socialism does not exclude individual property in food. One of the most important, perhaps the most important factor, in making human life happy and adding to its pleasures is the possible attainment of a private house. Collective ownership of the land does not exclude this.” It is very difficult to separate house and garden, especially from the point of view of considering the pleasures of life. A garden furnishes the opportunity for endless improvements, many of which cannot be separated from the idea of individual property. The concessions which collectivists have been compelled to make show conclusively the importance of private property.

Notwithstanding such modifications, many voices have been raised against the prospect of the socialisation of the means of production and the concomitant limitations of individual enterprise. The great English philosopher, Herbert Spencer,[172] against whom narrowness of view or conservatism could be urged, energetically attacked collectivist doctrines as tending to reduce human individuality to a dead level. By a series of cogent instances, he showed the evil results of the best intentioned efforts to equalise opportunities and to abolish poverty. He foretold that slavery would be the real outcome if the State interfered too much in spheres that ought to be left to individual enterprise. He believed that the institution of a collectivist State would bring great dangers.

Nietzsche has attacked socialism with his customary exaggeration. “Socialism,”[173] he wrote, “is the fanatical younger brother of dying despotism, whose goods he wishes to inherit; his efforts are, in the deepest sense of the word, reactionary. He wishes a wealth of power in the State greater than despotism ever enjoyed, but he goes beyond all the past inasmuch as he strives absolutely to stifle the individual; for him the individual is a useless efflorescence of nature to be tamed into a useful organ of the community.” Further, “Socialism at least teaches brutally and convincingly the danger of concentrating power in the State, for it is a covert attack on the State itself. When its harsh voice raises the war-cry ‘Let the State control as much as possible,’ the cry will at first become louder; but soon another phrase will grow equally clamant, ‘Let the State control as little as possible.’”

It is most probable that no shade of socialism will be able to solve the problem of social life with a sufficient respect for the maintenance of individual liberty. None the less the progress of human knowledge will inevitably bring about a great levelling of human fortunes. Intellectual culture will lead men to give up many things that are superfluous or even harmful, and that are still thought indispensable by most people. The conceptions that the greatest good fortune consists in the complete evolution of the normal cycle of human life and that this goal can be reached most easily by plain and sober habits will convince men of the folly of much of the luxury that now shortens human existence. Whilst the rich will choose a simpler mode of life and the poor will be able to live better, none the less, private property, acquired or inherited, may be maintained. Evolution must be gradual and much effort and new knowledge is required. Sociology, a new-born science, must learn of biology, her older sister. Biology teaches us that in proportion that the organisation becomes more complex, the consciousness of individuality develops, until a point is reached at which individuality cannot be sacrificed to the community. Amongst low creatures such as _Myxomycetes_ and _Siphonophora_, the individuals disappear wholly or almost wholly in the community; but the sacrifice is small, as in these creatures the consciousness of individuality has not appeared. Social insects are in a stage intermediate between that of the lower animals and man. It is only in man that the individual has definitely acquired consciousness, and for that reason a satisfactory social organisation cannot sacrifice it on pretext of the common good. To this conclusion the study of the social evolution of living beings leads me.

It is plain that the study of human individuality is a necessary step in the organisation of the social life of human beings.