Wars and Slavery in the Animal Kingdom. 67 



of ants as an ''evident reaction against instinct," as 

 Forel did, at least formerly, in his book mentioned 

 above. They are instinctive no less than the romps 

 and scuffles of young cubs, or the frolics of lambkins. 

 They are due, I suppose, to the natural impulse of 

 exercising the muscles, which is pleasurable to animals 

 as well as to human beings. At any rate it would be 

 wrong to ascribe them to intelligence, either in ants, 

 or in the higher animals. 



The erroneous doctrines about the "absolute blind- 

 ness" and the "mechanical automatism" of instinct, 

 which are still current, have done a great deal towards 

 making animal intelligence appear almost indispen- 

 sable. Assuming instinct to be a mere reflex mechan- 

 ism, it was of course impossible not to declare as "intel- 

 ligent activities" all the manifestations of the instinct- 

 ive faculties, which are determined and influenced by 

 individual sense perceptions and sense experiences. 

 This, however, as we have shown above,^ is an alto- 

 gether uncritical procedure. The study of ant life 

 enables us to determine more correctly the nature of 

 animal instinct, this being the case especially with 

 F. sanguinea, which in point of so-called "intelligence" 

 may fairly rank with the highest vertebrates. 



4. Slavery among the Sanguine Slavemakers. 



The custom prevalent among these red ants of rob- 

 bing and rearing slave pupae, is of course entirely 

 instinctive. Even our scientific opponents acknowledge 

 that it would be nonsense to explain it as an intelligent 



^) "Instinct and Intelligence," etc. (Herder, St. Louis, Mo.), Chap. 

 II and III. 



