48 Riley Presidential Address. 



able reasoning and reflective power ; while the anticipation of the 

 needs of the community as in the building of queen cells at the 

 proper time by bees and wasps, the varying treatment of the 

 young, and the preparation for swarming by all the social insects 

 argues an intuitive perception which is as conscious as that 

 which higher animals display in making similar provision for 

 their progeny. This very intuition is the origin of intellect, or, 

 rather, the primary form of intellect. It is, as Ward expresses it, 

 older than reason, and parent of the later faculties of abstraction 

 and reflection. It involves all that we know as sagacity and cun 

 ning, displayed by animals for their own good. 



But it is to the nature of this intelligence that I would call 

 your attention, since many may question the use of the term in 

 connection with these insects. It has been the fashion in the 

 past to separate man from the rest of the animal world by the 

 nature of his intelligence. The earliest philosophers, instead of 

 beginning with the simpler problems of subjective nature, seem 

 to have been fascinated by the more complex phenomena of ob 

 jective nature. They built up a fabric of metaphysics which 

 modern methods of induction and modern experimental physi 

 ology and psychology have demolished and remodeled. We have 

 had dissertations on the will as something quite independent of 

 the body, and speculations as to the difference between human 

 and divine will. 



We must certainly grant to insects the sensations of pleasure 

 and pain, for the worthiest authorities now concede that the 

 least of sentient beings or animals as contra-distinguished from 

 plants must possess feeling, however faint. Feeling means 

 either pleasure or pain, the former the inevitable out-growth of 

 experience favorable to the organism, the latter the converse. 

 The former is a sign post on the road to all that is good for the 

 race, the latter a warning of all that is evil; though, para 

 doxical as it may seem, this is just as necessary to the wel 

 fare of the organism. What is evil for the individual may be 

 good for the race. Now all feeling must be conscious, and the 

 different grades of consciousness of feeling, until we reach self- 

 consciousness, involving intellectual processes, are but gradations 

 in the manifestations of one and the same kind of force. Indeed, 

 it is now conceded by advanced thinkers of the biologic school 

 that intellect had its origin in and depends on the senses, and 



