THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 261 



for example, claims that in the rare cases of the use of tools 

 among the Arthropoda, we have evidence of the existence of 

 intellip;ent inventiveness of a rudimentary kind. Thus the crab 

 Melia carries a sea-anemone in its chela as a weapon wherewith 

 to sting its prey into a condition of paralysis. The leaf-cutting 

 ants of India and Brazil use their own thread-spinning larvae 

 as tools for cementing together the materials out of which 

 their nests are constructed. The predatory wasp Ammophila 

 urnaria uses a pebble to tamp the filling of its burrow. 

 According to the Wheelers (cf. Science, May 30, 1924, p. 486), 

 the hunting wasp Sphex (Ammophila) gryphus (Sm.) makes 

 similar use of a pebble. As Bouvier notes, however, this use 

 of tools appears "to be rather exceptional . . ., showing itself 

 only in the primitive state consisting of the use of foreign 

 bodies as implements." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 456.) 

 Moreover, the animals in question are limited to a concretely 

 determinate kind of tool, which their environment supplies 

 ready-made. Such a use of implements does not presuppose 

 any power of abstraction and generalization. In fact, the 

 presence of such a power is expressly excluded by the con- 

 sideration that the animal's so-called "inventiveness" is con- 

 fined exclusively to one particularized manifestation. 



At times the behavior of animals so closely simulates the 

 consciously telic or intelligent conduct of men, that only 

 severely critical methods enable us to discriminate between 

 them. An experiment, which Erich Wasmann, S.J., performed 

 upon ants will serve to illustrate this point. In one of his 

 glass nests. Father Wasmann constructed an island of sand 

 surrounded by a moat filled with water. He then removed 

 from their "nursery" a certain number of the ant larvae and 

 placed them on the island. Thereupon the ants were observed 

 to build a bridge of sand across the moat "for the 

 purpose," apparently, of rescuing the marooned larvae. Such 

 behavior seemed to imply an intelligent ordination of 

 a means to an end. Wasmann's second experiment, how- 

 ever, proved this inference to be wholly unwarranted; 



