INSTINCT AND HABIT. 
5 
in agreement due to any mental process. The same is true of termites, 
of locusts, of all the social insects which exhibit such wonderful phenomena. 
The Pyrrhocorid Iphita limbata is gregarious and lives in colonies on the 
bark of trees; is there any communication, any individuality, any mental 
process other than a blind reaction to some outside stimulus, under which 
all alike find that a particular spot is perhaps the warmest or the best 
suited for some such reason ? There are other exceptions which are 
perhaps more valuable; the courtship of butterflies is a beautiful thing, 
suggesting two perfectly happy beings enjoying to the full the delights 
of each other’s company and the perfect happiness of the crowning 
moment of life; there is no doubt of their being aware of each other’s 
presence, but the cold thought creeps in that it is after all a mechanical 
process, born of peculiar instincts, with nothing more c ‘ living ’ ’ than 
the reaction of two parts of an engine. The dances of flies and other 
small flying insects suggests mentality, social insects thoroughly enjoy¬ 
ing each other’s company and the extraordinary pleasure that huifran 
beings find in concerted movement; it is possible that we can compare 
insects with ourselves in this respect, but the balance -of evidence is 
certainly against it; one comes inevitably to the feeling that insects are a 
supreme expression of living matter adapted and co-ordinated to 
physical conditons, responding perfectly to mechanical stimuli, without 
mind or mental processes as we know them and as we can see them in birds 
and mammals ; they are the highest expression of life as evolved by 
natural processes, perfect machines without emotions. No thinking man 
questions the existence in higher mammals of mind-processes akin to our 
own if far lower, of some slight evidences of that higher mentality we 
call the soul, and which we hold to be the essential life, for which the 
objective life and the material body is but a case. No one would credit 
an insect with such forms of mentality, and the most sympathetic student 
of insect life has not advocated such a point of view. An insect is a 
living machine, responding to definite physical stimuli, with well- 
defined and very complex instincts, which are mechanical forms of 
mental action and take their origin in outward conditions. Were they 
possessed of higher forms of mentality, such as reason, judgment, voli¬ 
tion and the like, no one can say what might be the course of the world’s 
history; a combination of the red ants ((Ecophylla smaragdina) could 
probably drive human beings out of India and render the continent 
