224 SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 
singularly unprejudiced observer, that the doings of ants in- 
volve conscious guidance in the light of experience individually 
acquired. 
And yet the behaviour of different species of ants, each 
after its kind, is remarkably constant—so constant that, to 
use the words of Dr. Peckham in another connection, it is 
characteristic of the species, and would be an important part 
of any definition of the insect based upon its habits. And 
some part of this constancy may be due to tradition, though 
much of it may result from strong instinctive tendencies which 
intelligence guides to similar ends, because the conditions are 
similar in successive generations of social insects. 
From the point of view of observation, however, it is par- 
ticularly difficult to distinguish the part played by tradition as 
a psychological influence from that played by what we have 
above described as instinctive imitation. In our study of other 
modes of instinctive behaviour we can isolate an individual, or 
group of young individuals, and observe how far certain acts 
are performed prior to any experience. Thus chicks behave in 
certain instinctive ways under conditions which preclude their 
learning from the hen or other older birds—so that tradition 
cannot be operative. But where social behaviour is concerned, 
such methods of observation are necessarily excluded—save in 
such cases as that of the incipient community of ants. For if 
certain instinctive acts require for their due performance the 
stimulus of the like performance in others, what is this but a 
form of instinctive tradition ; and how are we to distinguish it 
from intelligent tradition, where a psychological factor has 
freer play and exercises guidance over the performance? In 
the present state of our knowledge we can do no more than 
suggest, as not improbable, that tradition passes through three 
phases: the first in which it is instinctive; the second in 
which it becomes intelligent through the satisfaction which the 
due performance of traditional acts arouses in consciousness ; 
and the third in which, at any rate in man, it takes on a 
rational form, and is made to accord with an ideal scheme, the 
product of conceptual thought and of reflection on data which 
