such food and just such rest as are needful to maintain its vigor."



III


I hope my reader is aware that ants practise horticulture and agriculture;
that they are skillful in the cultivation of mushrooms; that they have
domesticated (according to present knowledge) five hundred and eighty-four
different kinds of animals; that they make tunnels through solid rock; that
they know how to provide against atmospheric changes which might endanger
the health of their children; and that, for insects, their longevity is
exceptional,-- members of the more highly evolved species living for a
considerable number of years.


But it is not especially of these matters that I wish to speak. What I
want to talk about is the awful propriety, the terrible morality, of the
ant [1]. Our most appalling ideals of conduct fall short of the ethics of
the ant,-- as progress is reckoned in time,-- by nothing less than millions
of years!... When I say "the ant," I mean the highest type of ant,-- not,
of course, the entire ant-family. About two thousand species of ants are
already known; and these exhibit, in their social organizations, widely
varying degrees of evolution. Certain social phenomena of the greatest
biological importance, and of no less importance in their strange relation
to the subject of ethics, can be studied to advantage only in the existence
of the most highly evolved societies of ants.