Conclusion. 195 



the community-life of ants, which with suitable 

 co-operation for the welfare of the colony combines 

 a manifold independence of action on the part of the 

 single workers, in their mutual communications and 

 mutual services, in their wars, in their slave-mkking 

 expeditions and their confederations, in their nest 

 construction and in the manifold application of their 

 building skill to various changes of circumstances, 

 finally, in their breeding and nursing, embracing 

 various methods of education left to the choice of the 

 workers and manifesting, at the same time, the highest 

 degree of "self-sacrificing attachment" to their help- 

 less young ones : in all these points combined we must 

 rightly consider the life of ants as the climax of , 

 development in instinctive life throughout the animal 

 kingdom. As regards the perfection of the nervous 

 system and of the sense-organs, the higher mammals 

 are indeed far closer to man, than the ants; but as 

 regards the quasi-intelligent actuation of animal 

 instinct under the influence of sense-perceptions and 

 experiences for the various purposes of community- 

 life, ants no doubt approach nearer to man than even 

 the anthropoid apes. Indeed, neither of them pos- 

 sesses intelligence proper, that is to say, the power 

 of acting with deliberation and self-consciousness, of 

 inventing new means for attaining various purposes 

 and thus making progress in civilization. Still, the 

 chasm between the psychic life of animals and that l^ 

 of man, is, in many respects, wider between ape and 

 man, than between ant and man. 



Of course, the results of our study are very dif- 

 ferent from, and indeed altogether contrary to, the 



