ed ourselves, persist. They
are not easily left behind, even after long stages; and they form a
terrible obstacle to all high advancement.

_FIVE_

The bees or the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their
smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They
could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And
in these orderly insects there was obviously a capacity for labor, and
co-operative labor at that, which could carry them far. We all know
that they have a marked genius: great gifts of their own. In a
civilization of super-ants or bees, there would have been no problem of
the hungry unemployed, no poverty, no unstable government, no riots, no
strikes for short hours, no derision of eugenics, no thieves, perhaps
no crime at all.

Ants are good citizens: they place group interests first.

But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant
doesn't have the vote, apparently: he just has his duties.

This quality may have something to do with their having group wars. The
egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so the
egotism of the group is extremely ferocious and active. Is this one of
the reasons why ants fight so much? They go in for State Socialism,
yes, but they are not internationalists. And ants commit atrocities in
and after their battles that are--I wish I could truly say--inhuman.

But conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish within the community.
They are skilful. Ingenious. Their nests and buildings are relatively
larger than man's. The scientists speak of their paved streets, vaulted
halls, their hundreds of different domesticated animals, their pluck
and intelligence, their individual initiative, their chaste and
industrious lives. Darwin said the ant's brain was "one of the most
marvelous atoms in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of
man"--yes, of present-day man, who for thousands and thousands of years
has had so much more chance to develop his brain.... A thoughtful
observer would have weighed all these excellent qualities.

When we think of these creatures as little men (which is all wrong of
course) we see they have their faults. To our eyes they seem too
orderly, for instance. Repressively so. Their ways are more fixed than
those of the old Egyptians, and their industry is painful to think of,
it's hyper-Chinese. But we must remember this is a simian comment. The
instincts of the species