B2i ANIMAL NATURE AS A WHOLE. [iii. 



are endowed with mind. Granted that bees, ants, and other 

 social animals, are endowed with mind, and have external sensa- 

 tions, and other conceptions, and true instincts, all their social 

 acts would be sentient actions of their sensational instincts, and 

 these are almost the direct results of external sensations (276, i, 

 579, i). These social acts are, therefore, either direct or 

 incidental actions of the sensations of their external impressions. 

 Now, it is indubitable, that all such may be also nerve-actions 

 of the impressions only, and consequently, these social acts may 

 be excited solely by the vis nervosa, even if the animals be 

 endowed w^ith mind. That this actually is so in other animals 

 is fully established by observation (555 — 557) ; how then can 

 we infer the existence of mind from these social acts ? If the 

 acts of an animal are required to follow each other, or other 

 acts, in a certain order, the impressions which excite them must 

 be received in the same order, and the former will result, 

 whether the latter be felt or not. Which method nature has 

 adopted in social animals must be determined by the question, 

 whether they are endowed with mind or not ; but it would be a 

 perversion of the argument to say, that because the acts may 

 occur in two ways, they therefore are dependent on mind. The 

 probability is, that these animals are not endowed with mind, 

 because they have no brain, or at least not a brain, constituted 

 like those of animals undoubtedly endowed with mind. If it be 

 replied, that bees and ants no longer perform social acts when 

 deprived of their heads, it must not be forgotten that the eyes of 

 the insects are removed at the same time, and that it is by means 

 of the eyes that all these external impressions are received which 

 excite social acts. They yet can and do perform former move- 

 ments, although headless, but not in a definite order, and in rela- 

 tion to and in connection with the labours of others, because the 

 impressions which excite them are merely accidental, whilst 

 previously the impressions were made through the organs of 

 vision, in a given order predetermined by nature. The won- 

 derful concord in the acts of these social animals, is much more 

 probably a result of that wisdom which is manifested in the 

 sensational instincts of the whole animal kingdom, and in virtue 

 of which animals, even the sensational and thinking, perform 

 acts according to a design and preordination of nature (561, 

 263 — 270). When the acts of republican insects are considered 



