THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. I9I , 
tion, and should ascribe their actions to reason. 
If we were then told that they were not men, 
and they were in some places formidable ene¬ 
mies to man, and had even, by their continued 
molestations, caused certain villages to be for¬ 
saken by all human occupants, our interest 
would perhaps be mixed with some little shade 
of anxiety lest we were here confronted by a 
race who, under certain eventualities, might 
contest our claim to the sovereignty of the 
globe. But when we learn that these won¬ 
derful creatures are insects some few lines in 
length, our curiosity is cooled; we are apt, 
if duly guided by dominant prepossessions, to 
declare that the social organization of these 
beings is not civilization, but at most quasi-civ¬ 
ilization—that the guiding principle is not rea¬ 
son, but instinct or quasi-intelligence, or some 
other of those unmeaning words which are so 
useful when we wish to shut our eyes to the 
truth. Yet that ants are really, for good 
or evil, a power in the earth, and that they 
seriously interfere with the cultivation and 
development of some of the most productive 
regions known, is an established fact’ 
These latter statements may be rather 
