Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/184

172 "F. rufescens, the structure of the animal is such as to render self-feeding physically impossible. Its long and narrow jaws, adapted to pierce the head of an enemy, do not admit of being used lor feeding, unless liquid food is poured into them by the month of a slave. I his fact shows of how ancient an origin the instinct of slave-making must be; it has altered in an important manner a structure which could not have been so altered prior to the establishment of the instinct in question."—Animal Intelligence, p. 66.

When we consider that, though our knowledge of ants is yet in its infancy, we have already sufficient information to warrant us in placing these minute insects above all animals except man— I had almost said civilized man—in regard to their powers of reason, we may be permitted to question whether the habit of slave-making should not be classed as an act of reason rather than one of instinct. The fact that the slaves, in their new homes, so readily adapt themselves to the changed environment, so readily exhibit knowledge and ways of thinking and acting which must be acquired and cannot possibly be instinctive, for the reason that their ancestry can never have been subjected to the influence of a like environment, proves how great a share reason has in all that is mental in them. And since the slaves clearly acquire mental traits which fit them for their duties as servants, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the slave-holders in like manner individually acquire the mental traits which fit them for their functions as masters, i.e. that the slave-holding habit in them is not instinctive but rational. The question is capable, I imagine, of experimental investigation. Should it prove that the slave-making habit is an individually acquired, not an inborn trait, we should then have, in the highly modified structures of F. rufescens, an example