Examination of Some Objections. 55 



also the souls of elephants, dogs, seals, and dolphins. 

 And even in lower animals, whether they be endowed 

 with specially complicated instincts or not, a slight 

 degree of plasticity can be recognized on closer inspec- 

 tion. Lubbock tamed a wasp, and I succeeded in tam- 

 ing a Dytiscus. Even in ant life I have identified sev- 

 eral cases of plastic neurozymic action. Still, the dif- 

 ference between the plasticity of the soul in an insect 

 and an Orang-Utang is immensely wider than that 

 which intervenes between the soul of an Orang-Utang 

 and that of man, especially of individuals of an inferior 

 race. No one can (toy this whose vision is not ob- 

 scured by prejudice.'^) 



"In Natur und Offenbarung (1891) my worthy 

 friend and opponent in metaphysical questions, the 

 Jesuit Professor Eric Wasmann tries to oppose these 

 views in his Psychology of Mixed Ant Societies. 1 

 Yet his sagacious ingenuity failed him for once. It is 

 certainly an easy task to ridicule the superficial anthro- 

 pomorphic interpretations of the animal soul given by 

 such men as Brehm, Buechner and others, and to refute 

 them victoriously. But, in order to deny ant intelli- 

 gence, Wasmann attributes to these insects ratiocinations 

 similar to the human, which, of course, are far beyond 

 them." 



What Forel, as a nerve physiologist, calls by the 

 new name of "plastic neurozymic activities," exactly 

 coincides with what scientific psychology knew long 

 ago as the perfecting of innate instincts by the sense 



*) This is the title of the second-last chapter of our book: "Die 

 zusammengesetzten Nester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen," 

 Muenster, 1891. 



