On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 161 



proves the intelligence of man, and not that of the 

 animal. 



Even ants can be trained to some extent. I suc- 

 ceeded in taming a wild ant (F. rufibarbis) in a short 

 time, by accustoming it to lick honey from the tip of my 

 finger. 1 In the observation nest which contained the 

 Formica sanguinea and their slaves I trained the ants 

 to keep the apartments into which I introduced their 

 food entirely clean, and to use another separate glass- 

 pipe as a place for refuse. 2 The inclination of these 

 same ants to persecute the Dinarda, and their skill in 

 seizing them, was also due to some extent to training; 

 for the very use I made of their nest to study the inter- 

 national relations of the Dinarda-races, gave the ants 

 ample opportunity to improve their skill in hunting the 

 Dinardas by individual sense experiences, which in all 

 probability they never would have had in the freedom 

 of their natural homes. 



Still the possibility of training ants is far more lim- 

 ited than that of training higher animals. But the rea- 

 son of this difference is not so much the psychic su- 

 periority of the latter, as the extreme difficulty on our 

 part of finding suitable points of connection with these 

 wee creatures, whereas this connection is given in the 

 case of dogs and other vertebrates. There is an im- 

 mense difference in the size of man and ants, and the 

 difference is almost equally great in regard to the na- 

 ture of the organs through which their sense impres- 

 sions are mediated. But the difference in size between 



x ) "Vergleichende Studien" (1. Aufl.), P- 38. 



2 ) For these and other examples see* Die psych. Faehigkeiten der 

 Ameisen," p. 103 ff. 



