* 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 increase in the duration of the
family ties, with the resulting co-operation of a larger and larger
number of descendants for protection and defence, would give the
families in which such modification took place a distinct 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 increasing efficiency as regards outside competition.
But there is this vast and fundamental difference between bee society
and human society. In the former, the members of the society are each
organically predestined to the performance of one particular class of
functions 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.
* Collected Essays, vol v., Prologue, pp. 50-54,
[27] Among mankind, on the contrary, there is no such predestination to
a sharply defined place in the social organism.
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