Herbert Spencer

“ How does it happen that among those moths of which the female has but rudimentary wings, she continues to endow the males of her species with wings? How does it happen, for example, that among the Geometridæ, the peculiar structures and habits of which show that they have all descended from a common ancestor, some species have winged females and some wingless females; and that though they have lost the wings the ancestral females had, these wingless females convey to the males the normal developments of wings? ”

“ The evidence given by Grassi is not conclusive as to the young being all born alike; and it may be that there are some individuals born that could not be deviated from the natural course and made into soldiers. But there is one case which seems to show positively that the deviation Grassi believes to occur is real, and not due to the selection by the ants of an individual that though appearing to our eyes undifferentiated is not really so. This is that an individual can be made into a soldier after it has visibly undergone one half or more of the development into a winged form. ”

“ Though The Origin of Species proved to me that the transmission of acquired characters cannot be the sole factor in organic evolution, as I had assumed in Social Statics and in The Principles of Biology, published in pre-Darwinian days, yet I have never wavered in the belief that it is a factor and an all-important factor. ”

“ While the development of an embryo follows in a rude way the phyletic metamorphoses passed through by its ancestry, the order of development of organs is often gradually modified by the needs of particular species: the structures being developed in such order as conduces to self-sustentation and the welfare of offspring. ”

“ And even were it permissible to suppose that the required different variations had taken place simultaneously, natural selection cannot be supposed to have operated. The assumption would imply that in the struggle for existence, individuals of the European races who were less capable than others of crouching and squatting, gained by those minute changes of structure which incapacitated them, such advantages that their stirps prevailed over other stirps—an absurd supposition. ”

“ There is a fit place for building or burrowing to be chosen; there is the collecting together of grains of sand and cementing them into a strong and water-proof cell, or there is the burrowing into wood and there building several cells; there is the collecting of food to place along with the eggs deposited in these cells, solitary or associated, including that intelligent choice of small caterpillars which, discovered and carried home, are carefully packed away and hypnotized by a sting, so that they may live until the growing larva has need of them. ”

“ If a non-social and relatively unintelligent insect is capable of thus far consciously adjusting its actions, then it seems a reasonable supposition that in a community of social insects there has arisen a mass of experience and usage into which each new individual is initiated ”

“ There is great variety as to the constituents of the community and economy of the species in White Ants. One of the simplest conditions known is that studied by Grassi in the case of the European species Calotermes flavicollis. In this species there is no worker caste; the adult forms are only of two kinds, viz., soldiers, and the males and females; the sexes are externally almost indistinguishable, and there are males and females of soldiers as well as of the winged forms, though the sexual organs do not undergo their full development in any soldier whether male or female. ”

“ It is clear, à priori, that it must be fatal to a species if offspring are habitually produced before the conditions requisite for their survival are fulfilled. And hence, if the life is a complex one, and the care taken of offspring is great, reproduction must be much longer delayed than where the life is simple and the care of offspring absent or easy. ”

“ If for males we read workers, the case is parallel to the cases of those social insects, the queens of which bequeath characteristics they have themselves lost. The ordinary facts of embryonic evolution yield us analogies. What is the most common trait in the development of the sexes? When the sexual organs of either become pronounced, the incipient ancillary organs belonging to the opposite sex cease to develop and remain rudiments, while the organs special to the sex, essential and nonessential, become fully developed. ”

“ Now the subordination of the order of development of parts to the needs of the species, is conspicuously shown in the contrast between these two kinds of insects which Professor Weismann compares as though their requirements were similar. What happens with the blow fly? If it is able to suck up some nutriment, to fly tolerably, and to scent out dead flesh, various of its minor organs may be more or less imperfect without appreciable detriment to the species: the eggs can be laid in a fit place, and that is all that is wanted. ”

“ Hence it profits the species to have the reproductive system developed comparatively early—in advance, even, of various less essential parts. Quite otherwise is it with social insects, which take such remarkable care of their young; or rather to make the case parallel—quite otherwise is it with those types from which the social insects have descended, bringing into the social state their inherited instincts and constitutions. ”

“ What, then, will in some cases happen, supposing there is an arrested development consequent on innutrition? It will in some cases happen that while the nervous centres prompting and regulating deglutition are fully formed, the formation of those prompting and regulating the regurgitation of the food into the mouths of larvæ are arrested. What will be the consequence? The life of the worker is mainly passed in taking in food and putting it out again. If the putting out is stopped its life will be mainly passed in taking in food. ”

“ I said that though, during those early stages of decrease in which the disused limbs were external, natural selection probably had a share in decreasing them, since they were then impediments to locomotion, yet when they became internal, and especially when they had dwindled to nothing but remnants of the femurs, it is impossible to suppose that natural selection played any part: no whale could have survived and initiated a more prosperous stirp in virtue of the economy achieved by such a decrease. ”

“ If one of the eggs which she lays, capable, as Professor Weismann admits, of becoming queen, male, or worker of one or other kind, does not at a certain stage begin actively to develop its reproductive system, then those organs of the ancestral or pre-social type which the queen has lost begin to develop, and a worker results. ”

“ And now I must once more point out that a grave responsibility rests on biologists in respect of the general question; since wrong answers lead, among other effects, to wrong beliefs about social affairs and to disastrous social actions. ”

“ The soldier is not however a mere instance of simple arrested development. It is true that there is in it arrested development of the sexual organs, but this is accompanied by change of form of other parts—changes so extreme that one would hardly suppose the soldier to have any connection with either the young or the adult of the winged forms. ”

“ I went on to contend that the pre-social type must have been a conquering type, and that therefore in all probability the soldier-ants represent most nearly the structures of those ancestral ants which existed when the society had perfect males and females and could transmit acquired characters, while the other members of the existing communities are degraded forms of the type. ”

“ A fawn of the next generation is born with no such adjustment of nerves, muscles and bones as had been produced by greater exercise in the parent, and with no tendency to such adjustment. Consequently if, in successive generations, the horns go on enlarging, all these nerves, muscles, and bones, remaining of the original sizes, become utterly inadequate. The result is loss of life: the process of adaptation fails. "No," says Professor Weismann, "we must conclude that the germ-plasm has varied in the needful manner." ”

“ Among those who follow a controversy to its close, not one in a hundred turns back to its beginning to see whether its chief theses have been dealt with. Very often the leading arguments of one disputant, seen by the other to be unanswerable, are quietly ignored, and attention is concentrated on subordinate arguments to which replies, actually or seemingly valid, can be made. ”

“ Thus even had Professor Weismann shown that the special structures of the different individuals in an insect-community are not due to differences in the nurtures they receive, which he has failed to do, he would still be met by this difficulty in the way of his own view, in addition to the three other insuperable difficulties grouped together in a preceding section.
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The collateral issue, which has occupied the largest space in the controversy, has, as commonly happens, begotten a second generation of collateral issues. ”

“ The facets seen on the bones of the Panjabi infant or fœtus have been transmitted to it by the accumulation of peculiarities gained by habit in the evolution of its racial type—in which an acquisition having become a permanent possession, 'profitable to the individual under its conditions of life,' is transmitted as a useful inheritance.
"11. These markings are due to the influence of certain positions, which are brought about by the use of groups of muscles, and they are the definite results produced by actions of these muscles. ”

“ The larva carries into the pupa state a fixed quantity of tissue-forming material for the production of the imago. If the material is sufficient, then a complete imago is formed. If it is not sufficient, then, while the earlier formed organs are not affected by the deficiency, the deficiency is felt when the latest formed organs come to be developed, and they are consequently imperfect.
Even if left without reply, Professor Weismann's interpretation commits him to some insuperable difficulties, which I must now point out. Unquestionably he has "the courage of his opinions;" ”

“ The first worker was hatched on October 27, or fifty-seven days afterwards, and a continual succession has since been maintained, but as yet (November 19) no males or queens have made their appearance.'
"In a letter accompanying the report, Mr. Hart says:—
"'Since these were published, my notes go to prove that ants can practically manufacture at will, male, female, soldier, worker, or nurse. Some of the workers are capable of laying eggs, and from these can be produced all the various forms as well as from a queen's egg. ”

“ The mechanics of walking and running, in so far as they concern the question at issue, were analyzed; and it was shown that effort is economized and efficiency increased in proportion as the stress is thrown more and more on the inner digits of the foot and less and less on the outer digits. ”

“ But this is not enough, for there are, in many cases, two if not more kinds of workers, which implies that four sets of determinants must co-exist in the same egg. Even now we have not got to the extent of the assumption required. In the address above referred to on "Social Insects from Psychical and Evolutional Points of View," Professor Riley gives us (p. 33) the—
Forms in a Termes Colony under Normal Conditions. ”