THE MIND OF A GARDENING ANT 131 



both in intelligence and feelings. But the mute and 

 expressionless being which animates the metallic shell 

 of some social insect lives out of relation to our lines 

 of thought. Man and dog may take common action 

 on the same grounds : but we cannot see practical 

 problems eye to eye with an ant. 



Our sympathy and common share in the emotions 

 of birds and beasts has very largely helped us to infer 

 their intellectual processes. The border line where 

 love, fear, wants, and desires originate action is common 

 to us with them ; and we know that many animals also 

 share with us the aesthetic sense. 



In endeavouring to understand the process of thought 

 in insects, we have to subtract the whole of this common 

 ground, and to approach the subject almost not quite 

 as if it were working in a different medium. What 

 we do know of their senses seems in some instances to 

 keep us at this impossible distance. Physical inquiry 

 accentuates these differences. 



We know, for instance, that the compound eyes of 

 many insects must present objects to them in a dif- 

 ferent form from that in which we see them. Some 

 ants have no eyes at all, yet go about their daily 

 business quite as well as if they saw. Sir John 

 Lubbock's experiments show that they can smell ; but, 

 on the other hand, they cannot hear or, rather, do 

 not hear the sounds which we hear. They appear also 

 to be mute ; but it is quite likely that they utter 

 sounds which we cannot hear. Thus the human world 

 of sounds is non-existent for the ant, and very pro- 

 bably the ant brain is busy with sounds which are 



