On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 155 



tions, 1 that ants lack the power of intellectual reason- 

 ing. Not only are there no facts which cannot fully 

 be accounted for without attributing this power to them, 

 but, on the contrary, there are many facts which are 

 incompatible with such an assumption. The firm at- 

 tachment of the "slaves," developed out of robbed 

 pupae, to the ants which stole them; the inability of 

 all ants to apply their architectural skill intellectually 

 to new purposes, as to the building of a bridge in order 

 to obtain honey; the constant and diligent rearing of 

 the Lomechusa larvae in spite of the great damage the 

 ants have subsequently to suffer from this ravenous 

 brood, these and many other phenomena tell forcibly 

 against the assumption of intelligent reasoning in ants. 

 Nor is this psychic factor less wanting in higher ani- 

 mals. 2 Living, as they do, in the wide garden of 

 nature, monkeys have never learned the use of fire 

 during the past thousands of years; despite innumer- 

 able chance-experiences they have not even learned to 

 employ stones or branches of trees as weapons of attack 

 or defence; even higher animals manifest in their in- 

 stincts of adoption features quite as unreasonable, as is 

 the rearing of the Lomechusa by ants. 



Thus we meet with the same mysterious contradic- 

 tions in the habits of ants as of higher animals. On 



l ) Especially in our book: "Die zusammengesetzten Nester und 

 gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen" (Muenster, 1891), 3 Abschnitt, I. 

 Kap; then in our "Vergleichende Studien . . . ," above all in the chapters- 

 "1st die Bauthaetigkeit der Ameisen durch Intelligenz geleitet?" and 

 "Die Adoptionsinstincte im Thierreich." 



2 .) Compare the above mentioned chapters in the "Vergleichende 

 Studien" and the chapter "Kriege und Sklavenraub im Thierreich." See 

 also our essay; "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten, der Ameisen," p, 9S, 



