186 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



their way back again. They inhabit towns, and 

 build splendid and spacious palaces. Each ant 

 knows every other citizen of its own town, and an 

 ant from any other town is immediately recognised 

 as a foreigner. Ants have their overseers of indus- 

 trial enterprises, and regular hours for work and 

 sleep. The ant is the most pugnacious of all 

 animals, and the most muscular compared with 

 its sizfc. It will boldly attack the biggest creature 

 that walks if this creature invades its home. It 

 will fasten its mandibles into an enemy, and allow 

 itself to be torn to pieces without relaxing its hold. 

 Among some savage tribes, certain species of ants 

 are said to be used as surgeons. Infuriated ants are 

 allowed to fasten their mandibles on the opposite 

 edges of a gash, and in this way the wound is 

 closed. The ants are decapitated, and their bodi- 

 less heads with their relentless jaws serve as 

 stitches to the wound. Ants have holidays and 

 athletic festivals. On such occasions they romp 

 and chase each other and play hide-and-seek like 

 children. They stand on their hind-legs, embrace 

 each other with their fore-limbs, grasp each other 

 by the feet or antennae, pull each other down the 

 entrances to their towns, wrestle and roll over on 

 the sand, and so on all in the friendliest manner. 

 It is greatly to the credit of these little people that 

 no observer has ever yet known them to become 

 so inventively helpless or so athletically hard up 

 as to play slug-ball. Ants educate their young, 

 and practise the fundamental principles of human 

 states and societies. Forel, the great Swiss student 



