CHAPTEE III. 



Progressiveness of Science, 

 the first condition of scientific progress. 



No one who has watched a colony of ants with 

 any precision will find it easy to agree with the 

 ancient proverbialist that the ^^ little people " are 

 " exceeding wise," if we mean by " wise " to imply 

 anything like " knowing " or ^' scientific " in the hu- 

 man connotation of these terms. Ants are marvel- 

 lous creatures of routine, but they are foolish before 

 the new. Their little complex brains are well-stocked 

 compendia of ready-made nervous mechanisms, but 

 they are eminently non-educable. It is very difficult 

 to prove that the little people are able to profit by 

 experience at all. Therefore, if one were inclined to 

 give a lifetime to the education of insects, one would 

 not begin with ants. Their brains are too much 

 " set," or stereotyped, to be readily docile. It would 

 be unwise to be dogmatic regarding this difficult prob- 

 lem, but the general verdict of present biological 

 and psychological research on the behaviour of ants 

 is, that their marvellous powers are not acquired by 

 the individual in relation to the particular needs 

 of its life, are not readily modifiable to suit novel 

 contingencies even of a simple kind, are not, in the 

 strict sense, intelligent, but are hereditary instincts 

 which have arisen in the course of a long series of 

 generations by the action of natural selection on 

 germinal variations. 



If a disaster befell the ant-hill and reduced the 



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