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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 ad

vanced 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 pres

sure.

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."1

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.

1 Souvenirs d'enfance de S. Kowalevsky, 1895, pp. 301–311.

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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.

FIG. 27.-Halictus
quadricinctus.
(After Buffon.)

In the human race the individual life lasts longer and a division of labour takes place in the fashion suggested by Halictus quad

ricinctus.

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 pre

dict 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

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