ANIMAL TRADITION 222 
_ specialized along particular lines of behaviour, we should 
have at this stage certain hereditary trends of action, depen- 
dent on stimuli afforded by the behaviour of others, but 
needing, for their guidance to finer issues and more adequate 
and highly perfected performance, the play of intelligence and 
the satisfaction of nascent social impulses. In the economy of 
the hive or the nest there are, no doubt, instinctive tendencies 
and predispositions ; but there is also something more than 
organic heredity with its transmitted modes of behaviour 
analogous to the inherited form and structure of the body or 
its parts. Consciousness exerts a guiding influence. The 
insect is not independent of experience, but is capable of 
profiting by the teachings of that fertile mother of all intelli- 
gent behaviour. It is unnecessary, however, to insist on the 
fact that such insects are something more than instinctive 
automata, but are guided in their behaviour by the results of 
experience. Many careful observers lay stress upon this; if, 
indeed, they do not go further and claim for the social insect 
the higher rational faculty. “When we see,” says Lord’ 
Avebury,* ‘an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious 
inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making 
roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young, 
tending their domestic animals—each one fulfilling its duties 
industriously, and without confusion—it is difficult altogether 
to deny to them the gift of reason; and the preceding 
observations tend to confirm the opinion that their mental 
powers differ from those of man, not so much in kind as in 
degree.” 
If the term “‘ reason” be here accepted in the broad sense, 
and not in the narrower sense before indicated, this passage 
will probably be endorsed by the majority of those who have 
paid any attention to the subject. Even those who regard 
“reason,” in the more restricted acceptation of the term, as 
outside any scheme of evolution, since it differs in kind and 
not merely in degree, would probably deny this faculty to 
ants. In any case the passage expresses the conviction of a 
* “Scientific Lectures,” 2nd edit., p. 140. 
