1. From the standpoint of natural science we are bound to hold fast to the psychophysiological theory of identity (Monism) in contradistinction to dualism, because it alone is in harmony with the facts and with the law of the conservation of energy.
Our mind must be studied simultaneously both directly from within and indirectly from without, through biology and the conditions of its origin. Hence there is such a thing as comparative psychology of other individuals in addition to that of self, and in like manner we are led to a psychology of animals. Inference from analogy, applied with caution, is not only permissible in this science, but obligatory.
2. The senses of insects are our own. Only the auditory sense still remains doubtful, so far as its location and interpretation are concerned. A sixth sense has not yet been shown to exist, and a special sense of direction and orientation is certainly lacking. The vestibular apparatus of vertebrates is merely an organ of equilibration and mediates internal sensations of acceleration, but gives no orientation in space outside of the body. On the other hand the visual and olfactory senses of insects present varieties in the range of their competency and in their specific energies (vision of ultra-violet, functional peculiarities of the facetted eye, topochemical antennal sense and contact-odor).
3. Reflexes, instincts, and plastic, individually adaptive, central nervous activities pass over into one another by gradations. Higher complications of these central or psychic functions correspond to a more complicated apparatus of superordinated neuron-complexes (cerebrum).
4. Without becoming antagonistic, the central nervous activity in the different groups and species of animals complicates itself in two directions: (a) through inheritance (natural selection, etc.) of the complex, purposeful automatisms, or instincts; (b) through the increasingly manifold possibilities of plastic, individually adaptive activities, in combination with the faculty of gradually developing secondary individual automatisms (habits).
The latter mode requires many more nerve-elements. Through hereditary predispositions (imperfect instincts) of greater or less stability, it presents transitions to the former mode.
5. In social insects the correlation of more developed psychic powers with the volume of the brain may be directly observed.
6. In these animals it is possible to demonstrate the existence of memory, associations of sensory images, perceptions, attention, habits, simple powers of inference from analogy, the utilisation of individual experiences and hence distinct, though feeble, plastic, individual deliberations or adaptations.
7. It is also possible to detect a corresponding, simpler form of volition, i. e., the carrying out of individual decisions in a more or less protracted time-sequence, through different concatenations of instincts; furthermore different kinds of discomfort and pleasure emotions, as well as interactions and antagonisms between these diverse psychic powers.
8. In insect behavior the activity of the attention is one-sided and occupies a prominent place. It narrows the scope of behavior and renders the animal temporarily blind (inattentive) to other sense-impressions.