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.

After all that has been written of late years about the probable value
of relative experience in the long life of the ant, I suppose that few
persons would venture to deny individual character to the ant. The
intelligence of the little creature in meeting and overcoming
difficulties of a totally new kind, and in adapting itself to
conditions entirely foreign to its experience, proves a considerable
power of independent thinking. But this at least is certain: that the
ant has no individuality capable of being exercised in a purely selfish
direction;--I am using the word "selfish" in its ordinary acceptation.
A greedy ant, a sensual ant, an ant capable of any one of the seven
deadly sins, or even of a small venial sin, is unimaginable. Equally
unimaginable, of course, a romantic ant, an ideological ant, a poetical
ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical speculations. No human mind
could attain to the absolute matter-of-fact quality of the
ant-mind;--no human being, as now constituted, could cultivate a mental
habit so impeccably practical as that of the ant. But this
superlatively practical mind is incapable of moral error. It would be
difficult, perhaps, to prove that the ant has no religious ideas. But
it is certain that such ideas could not be of any