Chapter V
Termites
It was the custom, not long ago, to teach the inexperienced that the will can achieve whatever ambition may desire. "Believe that you can, and you can, if only you work hard enough"; this was the subject of many a maxim very encouraging, no doubt, to the young adventurer, but just as likely to lead to a bench in Union Square as to a Fifth Avenue studio or a seat in the Stock Exchange.
Now it is the fashion to give us mental tests and vocational suggestions, and we are admonished that it is no use trying to be one thing if nature bas made us for something else. This is sound advice; the only trouble is the difficulty of being able to detect at an early age the characters that are to distinguish a plumber from a doctor, a cook from an actress, or a financier from an entomologist. Of course, there really are differences between all classes of people from the time they are born, and a fine thing it would be if we could know in our youth just what each one of us is designed to become. In the present chapter we are to learn that certain insects appear to have achieved this very thing.
The termites are social insects; consequently in studying them, we shall be confronted with questions of conduct. Therefore, it will be well at the outset to look somewhat into the subject of morality; not, be assured, to learn any of its irksome precepts, but to discover its biological significance.
Right and wrong, some people think, are general abstractions that exist in the very nature of things. They
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