98 THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



a purpose? But if it be rejoined that the Formica 

 sanguinea exterminate the I^omechusa because of the 

 damage inflicted, we ask: Why then do the Formicae 

 sanguineae bestow such care upon their guests, as to 

 neglect and sacrifice their own colony, their offspring 

 and their species? 



Thus the life-history of the Formica sanguinea, 

 "the most intellectual ant", affords an example of how 

 from a more universal contemplation of ant-life, we are 

 necessarily led to adopt conclusions quite different 

 from those reached by certain "pseudo-psychologists" 

 of our day. Of course, it is still a mystery, in what 

 manner the single actions proceed from instinct. For 

 on this point the analogy between animal and man, 

 from which we must always proceed, becomes more 

 remote the further we "recede through the animal- 

 kingdom downwards from man. ' ' Still the fact re- 

 mains, that the faculty by which the activity of ants 

 is to be explained is not intelligence, but instinct, and 

 on this very point analogy retains its full force. But 

 if evident contradictions are to be avoided, this in- 

 stinct is not to be conceived as the power of mere 

 automatic reaction, but rather as a faculty guided by 

 sensuous cognition and modifiable within the limits of 

 this cognition by external experience. 

 I The high degree of objective finality which is 

 manifest in innumerable actions of the Formica san- 

 guinea does not proceed as such from the ant itself, 

 but from God's eternal Wisdom. That Wisdom, too, 

 can alone account for the double play of stupidity 

 which we have explained above. For, as Wasmann 

 profoundly remarks: "That supreme Wisdom which 



