confound reason with intelligence, as people are too prone to do. I deny
the one; and the other is incontestable, within very modest limits. It was,
I said, the moment to reason a little, to discover the cause of the hitch
and to attack the difficulty at its source. For the Tachytes the matter was
of the simplest. She had but to grab the body by the skin of the abdomen
immediately above the spot caught by the glue and to pull it towards her,
instead of persevering in her flight without releasing the neck. Simple
though this mechanical problem was, the insect was unable to solve it,
because she was not able to trace the effect back to the cause, because she
did not even suspect that the stoppage had a cause.

Ants doting on sugar and accustomed to cross a foot-bridge in order to
reach the warehouse are absolutely prevented from doing so when the bridge
is interrupted by a slight gap. They would only need a few grains of sand
to fill the void and restore the causeway. They do not for a moment dream
of it, plucky navvies though they be, capable of raising miniature
mountains of excavated soil. We can get them to give us an enormous cone of
earth, an instinctive piece of work, but we shall never obtain the
juxtaposition of three grains of sand, a reasoned piece of work. The Ant
does not reason, any more than the Tachytes.

If you bring up a tame Fox and set his platter of food before him, this
creature of a thousand tricks confines himself to tugging with all his
might at the leash which keeps him a step or two from his dinner. He pulls
as the Tachytes pulls, exhausts himself in futile efforts and then lies
down, with his little eyes leering fixedly at the dish. Why does he not
turn round? This would increase his radius; and he could reach then the
food with his hind-foot and pull it towards him. The idea never occurs to
him. Yet another animal deprived of reason.