THE INSTINCTH'E BEHAl'lOR OP ANTS. 529 



do not wish to intimate that this task has been accomplished in any 

 group of animals, much less in the ants, which offer an endless field 

 for further investigations. But it will be necessary before leaving the 

 subject to admit openly what has been somewhat covertly assumed in 

 the preceding pages the existence of some factor which directs and 

 coordinates the instinct actions in their adaptive course. Such a factor 

 lias been postulated under a variety of names by a host of thinkers and 

 speculators on the subject of instinct. It is the "physical Cherubim" 

 of the Rev. William Kirby in the passage cited above. Aristotle calls 

 it the <J'u%y alffOrjTtxrj, the school-men dubbed it the vis ccstinmtira, Was- 

 mann calls it the " sinnliches Erkenntniss- und Strebevermogen," 

 Driesch calls it the " entelechy," while some modern psychologists, 

 considering the matter from the introspective and therefore necessarily 

 human standpoint, are satisfied to speak of it as the " instinct-feeling," 

 " Trieb," "craving" or "impulse." 



It is evident that the best way to know what instincts are is to 

 experience, that is, to live them. Such experience shows that they arise 

 as primitive volitions or cravings, or what the Germans call " Triebe " 

 a word for which we have no exact equivalent in the English lan- 

 guage and that they are inseparable from certain pleasurable or 

 painful emotions. The question then suggests itself as to whether 

 there is anything to indicate that ants experience similar internal states. 

 We are, of course, working here merely with analogical inferences and 

 probabilities, and may, therefore, incur the contempt of a whole school 

 of German physiologists, but, as has been often stated by other authors, 

 we must either proceed in this manner or abandon animal psychology 

 altogether. I admit that it is very easy and very reprehensible to read 

 one's own psychology into an animal, but after a patient, and, I believe, 

 unprejudiced study of the ants, I have reached the same conclusions 

 as Forel, Wasmann and others, namely, that these insects show unequiv- 

 ocal signs of possessing both feelings and impulses. In my opinion 

 they experience both anger and fear, both affection and aversion, 

 elation and depression in a simple, " blind " form, that is, without any- 

 thing like the complex psychical accompaniment which these emotions 

 arouse in us. Whether a stinging ant or hornet merely exhibits a pure 

 reflex or has a feeling of anger besides, is a nice problem. I have unin- 

 tentionally sat on nests of J'cspa gennanica and Pogonoinvnnc.r bar- 

 batus, and while I have no doubt that I myself acted reflexly under the 

 circumstances, it will take quite an army of physiologists to convince 

 me that these creatures were acting as nothing but reflex machines. 



As would be expected, instinct, in its teleological and unconscious 

 aspect, has appealed very powerfully to the philosopher. He has, in 



35 



