MAN AND THE WORLD

*Ilya of Living : Nature and Man: •Edited by J. Arthur Thom- son. "(Hodder and Stoughton. 3s. "6crnet.)

University Press. 12s. 6d. net.) • • • . —

WE are invited by Professor Thoinson and his colleagues to reconsider the ant. . And this time *e are to regard it partly

as a Model and partly al; a warning:'

By their.very complete surrender ol individuality the ants have managed to create an astonishing organization for dealing with the vicissitudes of life: They have found a successful poise in the world. One of the chief means of their triumph is the division of .laboirr. There are queens, and there are workers ; and among the workers there are often soldiers and nurses, -foragers and housemaids. One .type. of ant must do the same type of work throughout its life—there

is no chance of insubordination or independence, no change of occupation, no eccentricity or genius. In a way the stupidity of ants gives us as much cause for astonishment as their instinctive wisdom. A warrior develops long jaws and hard teeth. His brain is devoted mainly to his function : it is a warrior-brain. Apart from his profession he has very little fluid intelligence or adaptability. This is a sad parable of over-specialization.

Professor Thomson catalogues the most notable features of the ant-society ; they are "the division of labour, the kin- sense, the communal conventions, the corporate activity, and the storage of food for evil days." And he draws a picture of ant-society, in some ways putting our human societies to shame, in others pointing a dreadful moral against the sub- ordination of individuals. There are the honey-ants of Texas, for example. Amongst them there is a caste which does nothing but act as storage jars for the community, " animated honey-pots."

The opposite way of life, the way of individualism and self- regard, can be equally successful :— The solitary or individualistic way of life is illustrated by wild cat, fox, otter, badger, pine marten, stoat, weasel, hedgehog, mole, shrews, hares, squirrel, and darrifinise—a very attractive set Of animals. The gregarious types (in Britain) are deer, rabbits, rats, mice, voles, and bats. A comparison of the two lists shows at a glance that all the finer types are individualistic with the exception of the deer."

This is a very partial survey. Professor Thomson explains that" gregarious mammals are not well represented in Britain." But from the instances he gives it-should be clear that there are graces proper to independence. There is wastefulness, too. Neither Socialism nor individualism can be said to offer in

itself a complete solution to our human problems. We mean no insult to ant or badger ; but as models for human conduct they are insufficient.

It was Swedenborg who observed a very radical difference between man and the other kingdoms of the earth. A cow is spontaneously a cow ; one is not more of a cow than another.

Man alone in creation has the capacity to become more himself, to become more manlike. Animals and plants are the dispersed types of human components, as it were ; and each species is a type that has fixed itself. Man's task is to reach the most energetic equilibrium of qualities that he can. Or, to put it in another way, while we may see, for the sake of illustration, Socialism in one species, individualism in another, the conclu- sion to be drawn for man is not that one method of life is preferable to the other. It is that the path of completion for human destiny is to be continually more socialistic and more individualistic, to make the highest effort to include the utmost degree of both values.

In the last chapter Dr. R. D. Lockhart writes of man himself. He recalls to us the fact that early man never in the least resembled the fictitious brute of popular fancy. It is a useful corrective to bear in mind Cro-Magnon Man, who lived towards the end of the Palaeolithic Age. He was six feet tall, with a brain capacity twenty per cent, larger than our own. He was "an artist in colours, an engraver and a sculptor," he painted scenes of the chase in red, yellow, black, white, and brown on dark cavern walls by the light of torches or lamps." Dr.

Lockhart even suggests that" modern man "may be as ancient as " prehistoric man."

"Anthropologists regard certain types of prehistoric men as

offshoots from the common stem, rather than as on the direct line of our ancestry, and .suggeet that the modern man type is much

older than has_been hitherto suspected." _ • • . .

He himself inclines to the theory that the classes of men and apes, living and extinct, diverged from a common ancestor more or less at the same time, several million years ago.

Our own Piltclown Man he refers to as "a fine old English gentleman." This attitude should endear him to Mr. H. J. 1.Ylassingham, who has written a large and interesting volume to prove that the men of England in the New Stone Age were not pugnacious savages, but men of peace, with a great and noble culture. He describes the monuments, the huge burial mounds, the quarries and mines of pre-Celtic England ; and shows what co-ordination of human beings was needed to produce them. He pictures the England of Downland Man as highly civilized, with its centre or capital at Avebury. Even previously it was allowed that the remains at Avebury imply "a considerable population living in a settled condition of peace, united in the observance of a widely recognized cult, and accustomed to combine for common action under the direction of some recognized authority."

So much was admitted, but the rigorous dogma of the Darwinian "struggle for existence" made the application of the facts inconceivable. One investigator, for instance, confessed that the absence of weapons from the burial mounds had once made him suspect that Downland man was after all peaceful ; but his suspicion that orthodox anthropologists might be completely mistaken never made him disagree with their doctrines.

Mr. Massingham thinks that the magnitude of these early inonuments connects them with Egypt. He brings out many other cultural similarities—in scientific knowledge, in customs, in psychology, in beliefs—and draws the inference that pre- Celtic Britain had been colonized, from Egypt, either directly, or intermediately from Spain. He writes warmly and well, with a vast command of facts. There is a strain of self- consciousness in him that leads to occasional obscurity, but on the whole Downland Man is a work of great uhefulness and courage.

Mr. Neville Jones has prepared a small and simple mono- graph upon The Stone Age in Rhodesia. Its chief value is in the description of the methods of archaeological exploration, and in the account of the arts and crafts of the Rhodesian bushman. it is a good and modest contribution to the records Of science.