The success and extent of such development clearly depend on the relation of two series of activities in the individual which may in the most general way be described as the capacity for varied reaction and the capacity for communication. The process going on in the satisfactorily developing gregarious animal is the moulding of the varied reactions of the individual into functions beneficial to him only indirectly through the welfare of the new unit—the herd. This moulding process is a consequence of the power of intercommunication amongst the individual constituents of the new unit. Intercommunication is thus seen to be of cardinal importance to the gregarious, just as was the nervous system to the multicellular.
Moreover, in a given gregarious species the existence of a highly developed power of reaction in the individual with a proportionately less developed capacity for communication will mean that the species is not deriving the advantages it might from the possession of gregariousness, while the full advantages of the type will be attained only when the two sets of activities are correspondingly strong.
Here we may see perhaps the explanation of the astounding success and completeness of { 62} gregariousness in bees and ants. Their cycle of development was early complete because the possibilities of reaction of the individual were so small, and consequently the capacity for intercommunication of the individual was relatively soon able to attain a corresponding grade. The individual has become as completely merged in the hive as the single cell in the multicellular animal, and consequently the whole of her activities is available for the uses of the State. It is interesting to notice that, considered from this aspect, the wonderful society of the bee, with its perfect organization and its wonderful adaptability and elasticity, owes its early attainment of success to the smallness of the brain power of the individual.
For the mammals with their greater powers of varied reaction the path to the consummation of their possibilities must be longer, more painful, and more dangerous, and this applies in an altogether special degree to man.
The enormous power of varied reaction possessed by man must render necessary for his attainment of the full advantages of the gregarious habit a power of intercommunication of absolutely unprecedented fineness. It is clear that scarcely a hint of such power has yet appeared, and it is equally obvious that it is this defect which gives to society the characteristics which are the contempt of the man of science and the disgust of the humanitarian.