"How, as Huber asks, can we comprehend the mode in which such a crowd of laborers, occupied at the same time on the edge of the comb, could agree to give it the same curvature from one extremity to the other; or how could they arrange together to construct on one face cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them such enlarged dimensions?"[91]
Surely, no "variation of instinct," however complex, can possibly account for such a deviation from the normal!
It is hardly necessary to give more evidence as to the presence of reason in the psychical organisms of the lower animals; I believe that I have clearly demonstrated that some of them do make use of intelligent ratiocination. To prove that this view, i.e. that the lower animals reason, is widely held, I need only point to the works of such men as Darwin, Büchner, Forel, Huber, Lubbock, Hartmann, Kirby and Spence, and dozens of others.[92]
We have seen that the lower animals seem to possess very near, if not quite, all of the fundamental psychical habitudes of the highest animal of all—Homo sapiens; we will now proceed to study certain psychical attributes in the possession of the lower animals which man has lost in the process of evolution. These attributes will be embraced under the heading of Auxiliary Senses.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Compare Huber, Vol. II. p. 280; see also Chap. IV. of this work.
[78] In order to avoid technicalities I think it best to use synonyms with which the general student is familiar. The non-technical reader will know at once what is meant by the "blood" of the ant.—W.
[79] Huber, The Natural History of Ants, p. 249; quoted also by Lubbock, Ants, Bees, and Wasps, p. 83; Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 65; Kirby and Spence, Entomology, p. 369 et seq.
Our species of blacks and reds differ but very little in form and habits from their European kin; so the experiment may be easily performed by any one at all interested in this remarkable instance of "slave master, and master slave."—W.
[80] Lubbock, Ants, Bees, and Wasps, pp. 88, 89.