170 Chapter IV. 



suffer their heads to be torn off, than yield to the 

 enemy the pupae they carry in their jaws. And yet, 

 it is not even for their own children, that they "sacri- 

 fice themselves so unselfishly;" their charges are but 

 their foster-children. But that higher natural law, 

 which has made preservation of the species the fore- 

 most instinctive commandment implanted in the ani- 

 mal soul, this natural law, I say, also constrains the 

 worker-ants to risk life and limb in behalf of beings 

 begotten by others. This commandment they observe 

 faithfully, not led by any sense of duty or by noble 

 forgetfulness of self, but by an irresistible, instinctive 

 impulse implanted in them by Another, and to which 

 they yield obedience, not intelligently or voluntarily, 

 but urged on by a blind necessity of nature ! 



To credit animals with intelligence, to ascribe to 

 them ever so faint a trace of intellectual knowledge of 

 the purpose of their actions, will necessarily lead to 

 extolling the self-sacrifice of the single workers for 

 the welfare of the colony and especially for the young, 

 as a high degree of quasi-human, nay of superhuman 

 virtue. And in fact, L. Buechner, E. Haeckel, Th. 

 Eimer, O. Zacharias and other modern animal psychol- 

 ogists have actually ventured such assertions.^ Of 

 course, their only commendation is their boldness, but 

 it is a boldness leading to the greatest absurdities. 



What is it then, that impels the ants to such heroic 

 devotedness and self-sacrifice for the offspring of 

 their colony? Is it perhaps "motherly love"? No; 

 for the workers are but the sisters or aunts of their 



1) Wasmann, "Die zusammengesetzten Nester und gemischten 

 Kolonien der Ameisen," pp. 190 and 191, 



