"Then you would be surprised to know how many of the most sensational achievements of man were surpassed by the insects hunDr.eds of years ago without any artificial aids." The finger tips of his strong nervous hands played a tattoo against each other, "You talk about the Age of Speed and Man's Conquest of the Air; and yet the fly Cephenomia, the swiftest living creature, can outpace the fastest of your boasted aeroplanes. What is the greatest scientific marvel of the century? Probably you would say radio. But Count Arco, the German radio expert, has proved the existence of a kind of wireless telegraphy, or telepathy, between certain species of beetle, which makes nothing of a separation of miles. Lakhovsky claims to have demonstrated that this is common to several other insects. When the Redemanni termites build their twenty-five-foot conical towers topped with ten-foot chimneys they are performing much greater marvels of engineering than building an Empire State Building. To match them, in proportion to our size, we should have to put up skyscrapers four thousand feet high — and do it without tools."
"I knew the ants would come into it," said Nordsten sotto voce.
Sardon turned on him with his hot piercing gaze.
"Termites are not true ants — the term 'white ants' is a misnomer. Actually they are related to the cockroach. I merely mentioned them as one of the most remarkable of the lower insects. They have a superb social organization, and they may even be superior strategists to the true ants, but they were never destined to conquer the globe. The reason is that they cannot stand light and they cannot tolerate temperatures below twenty degrees centigrade. Therefore, their fields of expansion are for ever limited. They are one of Nature's false beginnings. They are a much older species than man, and they have evolved as far as they are likely to evolve… It is not the same with the true ants."
He leaned forward over the table, with his face white and transfigured as if in a kind of trance.
"The true ant is the destined ruler of the earth. Can you imagine a state of society in which there was no idleness, no poverty, no unemployment, no unrest? We humans would say that it was an unattainable Utopia; and yet it was in existence among the ants when man was a hairy savage scarcely distinguishable from an ape. You may say that it is incompatible with progress — that it could only be achieved in the same way that it is achieved by domestic cattle. But the ant has the same instincts which have made man the tyrant of creation in his time. Lasius fuliginosus keeps and milks its own domestic cattle, in the form of plant lice. Polyergus rufescens and Formica sanguined capture slaves and put them to work. Messor barbarus, the harvesting ant, collects and stores grain. The Attiini cultivate mushrooms in underground forcing houses. And all these things are done, not for private gain, but for the good of the whole community. Could man in any of his advances ever boast of that?"
"But if ants have so many advantages," said the Saint slowly, "and they've been civilized so much longer than man, why haven't they conquered the earth before this?"
"Because Nature cheated them. Having given them so much, she made them wait for the last essential — pure physical bulk."
"The brontosaurus had enough of that," said Nordsten, "and yet man took its place."
Sardon's thin lips curled.