it becomes possible for a useful purpose to be achieved through the
harmonious association of individual workers. This community of
instinct exists also among the higher animals, but here it is harder
to distinguish from associations originating through conscious will,
inasmuch as speech supplies the means of a more perfect
intercommunication of aim and plan. We shall, however, definitely
recognise {129} this general effect of a universal instinct in the
origin of speech and in the great political and social movements in
the history of the world. Here we are concerned only with the
simplest and most definite examples that can be found anywhere, and
therefore we will deal in preference with the lower animals, among
which, in the absence of voice, the means of communicating thought,
mimicry, and physiognomy, are so imperfect that the harmony and
interconnection of the individual actions cannot in its main points
be ascribed to an understanding arrived at through speech. Huber
observed that when a new comb was being constructed a number of the
largest working-bees, that were full of honey, took no part in the
ordinary business of the others, but remained perfectly aloof.
Twenty-four hours afterwards small plates of wax had formed under
their bellies. The bee drew these off with her hind-feet, masticated
them, and made them into a band. The small plates of wax thus
prepared were then glued to the roof of the hive one on the top of
the other. When one of the bees of this kind had used up her plates
of wax, another followed her and carried the same work forward in the
same way. A thin rough vertical wall, half a line in thickness and
fastened to the sides of the hive, was thus constructed. On this,
one of the smaller working-bees whose belly was empty came, and after
surveying the wall, made a flat half-oval excavation in the middle of
one of its sides; she piled up the wax thus excavated round the edge
of the excavation. After a short time she was relieved by another