214 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



preparing a clearing around their nest, and, six 

 months later, harvesting the ant-rice — a kind of 

 grass of which they are particularly fond — even 

 seeking and sowing the grain which shall yield the 

 harvest ; the collection by other ants of grass to 

 manure the soil, on which there grows a species 

 of fungus upon which they feed ; the military 

 organisation of the ecitons of Central America; 

 and so forth. But to class all of these activities 

 of the ant as illustrations of instinct is a survival 

 of an old-fashioned method of treatment. 



* Suppose that the intelligent ant v/ere to make 

 observations on human behaviour as displa3-ed in 

 one of our great cities or in an agricultural district. 

 Seeing so great an amount of routine work going 

 on around him, might he not be in danger of 

 regarding all this as evidence of hereditary instinct ? 

 Might he not find it difficult to obtain satisfactory 

 evidence of the fact that this routine work has to 

 some extent to be learned ? Might he not say 

 (perhaps not wholly without truth), ''I can see 

 nothing whatever in the training of these beings 

 to fit them for their life-work. The training of 

 their children has no more apparent bearing upon 

 the activities of their after-life than the feeding of 

 our grubs has on the duties of ant-life. They 

 seem to fall into the routine of life with little or 

 no preparatory training as the periods for the 

 manifestation of the various instincts arrive. If 

 learning thereof there be, it has so far escaped 

 our observation. And such intelligence as their 

 activities evince (and many of them do show 



