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i
Ants and Some Other Insects
An Inquiry into
The Psychic Powers of these Animals
With an Appendix on
The Peculiarities of Their Olfactory Sense
By
Dr. August Forel
Late Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Zurich
Translated from the German
By
Prof. William Morton Wheeler
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Chicago
The Open Court Publishing Company
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd.
1904
ii
Copyright, 1904
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO
1
ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS.
When discussing the ant-mind, we must consider that thesesmall animals, on the one hand, differ very widely from ourselvesin organisation, but on the other hand, have come, throughso-called convergence, to possess in the form of a social commonwealtha peculiar relationship to us. My subject, however, requiresthe discussion of so many complicated questions that I am compelledto assume acquaintance with the work of others, especiallythe elements of psychology, and in addition the works of P. Huber,Wasmann, von Buttel-Reepen, Darwin, Romanes, Lubbock, myFourmis de la Suisse, and many others. Since the functions of thesense-organs constitute the basis of comparative psychology, Imust also refer to a series of articles entitled “Sensations des Insectes”which I have recently published (1900-1901) in the Rivistade Biologia Generale, edited by Dr. P. Celesia. In these papers Ihave defined my position with respect to various authors, especiallyPlateau and Bethe.
Very recently Bethe, Uexkull, and others have denied the existenceof psychic powers in invertebrate animals. They explainthe latter as reflex-machines, and take their stand on the ground ofthe so-called psycho-physical parallelism for the purpose of demonstratingour inability to recognise mental qualities in these animals.They believe, however, that they can prove the mechanical regularityof behavior, but assume unknown forces whenever they areleft in the lurch in their explanations. They regard the mind asfirst making its appearance in the vertebrates, whereas the old Cartesiansregarded all animals, in contradistinction to man, as mindless(unconscious) machines.2
The Jesuit father E. Wasmann and von Buttel-Reepen arewilling, on the other hand, to accept the inductive inference fromanalogy as a valid scientific method. Like Lubbock, the lecturerand others, they advocate a comparative psychology of the invertebratesand convincingly demonstrate the existence of psychic facultiesin these animals. Wasmann, however, puts a very low estimateon the mental powers of the higher vert