For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile members of a community could possibly affect the structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.
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Embryology will reveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class.
We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle.
Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.
He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having habits and structure not at all in agreement.
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
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