FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>  
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
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>  



Top keywords:

unimaginable

 

social

 

evolved

 
species
 
ethics
 

capable

 
selfish
 

highly

 

considerable

 

importance


experience
 

practical

 

persons

 

venture

 

thinking

 
suppose
 

exercised

 

purely

 

relative

 
individuality

independent

 
individual
 

meeting

 

conditions

 

overcoming

 

adapting

 

difficulties

 
creature
 

character

 

totally


proves

 

intelligence

 

foreign

 

sensual

 

constituted

 

cultivate

 

mental

 

quality

 

attain

 

absolute


matter

 

impeccably

 

religious

 

difficult

 

superlatively

 

incapable

 
speculations
 

greedy

 

acceptation

 

ordinary