traces of a sensibility to strange experiences, and of corresponding adaptations of movements.  We cannot, moreover, conceive how the remarkable instincts which they manifest can have been acquired originally, except by virtue of some such power.  But the power in them now is evidently of a rudimentary kind, and must remain so while they have not those higher nerve-centres in which the sensations are combined into ideas, and perceptions of the relations of things are acquired.  Granting, however, that the bee or ant has these traces of adaptive action, it must be allowed that they are truly rudiments of functions, which in the supreme nerve-centres we designate as reason and volition.  Such a confession might be a trouble to a metaphysical physiologist, who would thereupon find it necessary to place a metaphysical entity behind the so-called instincts of the bee, but can be no trouble to the inductive physiologist—­he simply recognizes an illustration of a physiological diffusion of properties, and of the physical conditions of primitive volition, and traces in the evolution of mind and its organs, as in the evolution of other functions and their organs, a progressive specialization and increasing complexity.”

The recently published experiments of Sir John Lubbock show that ants under certain circumstances are both stupid and devoid of any intelligent comprehension in the way of surmounting difficulties; but this distinguished observer has also shown that as regards communication between ants, and in the regulation of the ordinary circumstances of their lives, these insects evince a high degree of intelligence, and exhibit instincts of a very highly developed kind.  Still, making every allowance for the development of extraordinary mental power in some species of ants, there can be little doubt of the purely automatic beginnings and nature of most, if not all, of the acts of ordinary ant existence.  The young ant, wasp, or bee, will begin its labors and discharge them as perfectly at the beginning of its existence as a perfect insect, as at the close of life.  Here there is no experience, no tuition, no consciousness, no reason, and no powers save such as have been transferred to the insect as a mere matter of heredity and derivation from its ancestors, who lived by an unconscious rule of thumb, so to speak.  It is very hard at first to convince one’s self, when watching an ant’s nest, that intelligence and consciousness play little or no part in the apparently intelligent operation of these insects.  But to assume the contrary would be to maintain that the insect stands on an equal footing to man himself, and for such a supposition there is neither lawful ground nor sympathy.  The marvellous instinct of lower life stands on a platform of its own, has its own phases of development, and probably its own unconscious way of progress.  The higher reason and intellect of humanity similarly possesses its own peculiar standard, rate, and method of culture.  A man may seek and find in the ways of lower existence not merely a lesson in the ordering of his existence, but some comfort, also, in the thought that the progress of lower nature is not unknown in the domain of human hopes and aspirations.