vi INSTINCT 97 



be wholly blind? If so, let him mark what follows. The 

 ants not merely tolerate the Lomechusa, but actively tend 

 its larvae, on the same methods by which they nurse their 

 own. Now, it happens the nursing suited to an ant larva 

 is fatal to a Lomechusa larva, and in course of time the 

 ants appear to find this out, and modify their whole system 

 of nursing. 1 



Difficult as it is to conceive the psychological conditions 

 under which such contrasts are possible, we may still get 

 some help from the analogy of human action. When 

 comparative psychologists take occasional inconsistency as 

 proving the utter absence of intelligence they are using 

 an argument which would equally disprove the existence of 

 intelligence in man. After all, is an ant nourishing para- 

 sites that destroy its young guilty of a greater absurdity 

 than, say, a mother promoting her daughter's happiness by 

 selling her to a rich husband, or an inquisitor burning a 

 heretic in the name of Christian charity, or an Emperor 

 forbidding his troops to give quarter in the name of civili- 

 sation ? The mother really desires her daughter's happi- 

 ness, but her conception of the means thereto is confused, 

 and rendered self-contradictory by worldly ambitions. The 



1 Wasmann, S. d. A., pp. 125-8. He says that the modified system is 

 applied to the ant larvae as well, producing as a result many pseudo- 

 females instead of mere neuters. 



Wasmann thinks the whole proceeding an insoluble problem for the 

 theory of animal intelligence and morality, and sees in it an illustration 

 of the Divine wisdom that maintains the equilibrium in nature. Whether 

 it is a conceivable attribute of a Divine wisdom so to make its creatures 

 that they can only be preserved by destroying each other is a problem 

 which Dr. Wasmann does not raise. One may ask whether such a 

 wisdom, though supposed to be infinite, is not more self-contradictory than 

 the limited intelligence that may be attributed to ants. That a limited 

 intelligence should exhibit contradictions in its different processes is not 

 surprising, and it is the chief defect of Dr. Wasmann's book that he over- 

 looks this point. In the present case, for example, he attributes the 

 modification of nursing methods by the ants to " sense knowledge," but 

 refuses the name of intelligence, because Intelligence, he says, would 

 teach the ants that the better they nurse the Lomechusse, the more 

 certainly their nest will perish. That depends on the degree of intelli- 

 gence. There may be intelligence enough to grasp simple and immediate 

 results that does not extend to wider or more remote results. Be that as 

 it may, the intelligence of the ants appears equal, on Wasmann's own 

 showing, to defeating the manoeuvres of the " Divine wisdom." The 

 truth is that the whole proceeding illustrates, not merely limitation of 

 intelligence, but, still more, perversion of instinct, disregard for the 

 young, otherwise so carefully tended. 



H 



