Evening star., 1938-08-18
OF STARS,
MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress
in Field, Laboratory
and Study.
D.. THnAAC HENpY
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

and Study.
By THOMAS r. HENRY.
Some folks-and not all Of them Com
munists-evidently look with envy -on
ant hills and beehives.
They dare to hope that in some far
distant future mankind itself will attain
to some such ideal socialism where every
one will work instinctNely, unquestion-
ably and without deviation as unit In
the totalitarian state.
The great drawback seems to be that
man shares with mice and monkeys
irrepressible tendencies to be curious,
dissatisfied and original. The individual
often obeys orders or follows tradition
reluctantly, thinking that he can do
things in better ways. He worries. He
sets rather high value on his own ego
and is often reluctant to have it
eliminated. even in the most exalted and
beautiful causes.
Now 1t has been assumed that the So
cial insects do not think as individuals,
that they act entirely according to in
stinct. Through millions of years this
instinct has been woven into wonderful
patterns OF cooperation. tar more per-
feet than anything man has been able
to attain. At least 1t looks that way,
viewing ants, bees or termites en- masse.
Some heretical doubts have been ex-
pressed by few biologists-notably Aus
tin H. Clark OF the United States Ma
tlonal Museum-who have so far de-
parted from tradition as to observe the
habits Of insects as individuals, rather
than as groups. But that, for the pres
ent, is beside the point.
Accepting the more widely held view
point, it looks as If man was near the
end OF his progress toward the glorious
ideal OF the ant hill unless he can
crystalline all his past attainments into
instincts and henceforth for the rest of
his time on earth act strictly according
to their dictates without trying to i'm
prove upon them.
Various expedients to this end seem
to have proved only indifferently sue
cessful. But a ray of hope now is offered
by an English biologist named Frank
Balfour- Browne. president OF the Royal
Mlcroscopical Society. Unconsciously
Mr.. Browne thinks, the human race al
ready may have turned to the very road
which has proved SO successful for the
social insects He has been delving into
the evolution of their habits from the
ways OF the partly social to those of the
completely social.
A notable phenomenon Of their prog
ress seems to have been the elimination
OF the male by one device or another and
the restriction OF reproduction to a few
specially chosen females. The males
and the other females become, to various
degrees, almost mechanical toilers and
fighters.
Says Mr.. Boulfour- Browne: "As hui
man beings we pride ourselves on our
intelligence, and although we possess a
few instincts our lives are dominated by
our capacity to learn by experience. We
have replaced the race memory of in
sects by literature in which are stored
up the experiences of foregone genera
tions.
But so far human society has been
dominated by the male-the sex which,
at least until recently, has been recog-
nized as the more intelligent, the female
being the more intuitive. Now a change
is taking place and the female in some
countries is asserting herself Actually
AL 0iSdG AAAtdlA SIlC Cdu OuGtOtC Lie
male in a parliamentary election With
the dominance Of the female. competing
with the male in the professions and
trades, comes birth control dominant
factor in insect communities. It Is
curious to notice that in the two
European countries definitely dominated
by the male, Germany and Italy, the
cry is for increase in population and not
for birth control.
1T Is not necessarily true that because
the female is becoming dominant she
Is becoming more intelligent. In fact, it
Is possible that 1t is an improvement in
her intuitive faculty that is bringing her
to the front, and 1t may well be that as
woman takes over the control of affairs,
as it seems likely that she WILL intuition
will increase and intelligence diminish,
and the future of the human race may
become something very like what we
now see in the ants, in which the males
will ultimately cease to exist as unneces-
sary and mere drain upon the sre-
sources of the community
Whatever the reaction of women will
be to this decidedly left-handed compli-
ment, Mr. Balfour- Browne must be left
to his fate.
It will be hard to prove, of course, that
the intuitive' faculty and the tendency
to act according to instinct rather than
reason is more concentrated in the fe-
male of the species or that intelligence
is more concentrated in the male. It
would be hard to prove that more Of the
one means less of the other.
But it Is commonly observed that
women themselves set up a claim to
superior intuition and that they prefer
it, on critical occasions to deliberate
Judgment. Perhaps there is something,
after all, In what the British biologist