Is there one that is well up toward man?
O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of
any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several
arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or
two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man,
savage or civilized!
Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier
which separates man and beast.
O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to
seriously say there is no such frontier.
O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the
gull, the mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures
put their this’s and thats together just as Edison would have
done it and drew the same inferences that he would have drawn.
Their mental machinery was just like his, also its manner of
working. Their equipment was as inferior to the Strasburg clock,
but that is the only difference–there is no frontier.
Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly
offensive. It elevates the dumb beasts to–to–
O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the
Unrevealed Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such
thing as a dumb beast.
Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
O.M. On quite simple ones. “Dumb” beast suggests an animal
that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no
way of communicating what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS
speech. We cannot understand everything she says, but we easily
learn two or three of her phrases. We know when she is saying,
“I have laid an egg”; we know when she is saying to the chicks,
“Run here, dears, I’ve found a worm”; we know what she is saying
when she voices a warning: “Quick! hurry! gather yourselves
under mamma, there’s a hawk coming!” We understand the cat when
she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
and lifts up a soft voice and says, “Come, kitties, supper’s
ready”; we understand her when she goes mourning about and says,
“Where can they be? They are lost. Won’t you help me hunt for
them?” and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges
at midnight from his shed, “You come over here, you product of
immoral commerce, and I’ll make your fur fly!” We understand a
few of a dog’s phrases and we learn to understand a few of the
remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few
of the hen’s speeches which we understand is argument that she
can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot
comprehend–in a word, that she can converse. And this argument
is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the
Unrevealed. It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to
call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Now as to the ant–
Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that–as you
seem to think–sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual
frontier between man and the Unrevealed.
O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the
aboriginal Australian never thought out a house for himself and
built it. The ant is an amazing architect. She is a wee little
creature, but she builds a strong and enduring house eight feet
high–a house which is as large in proportion to her size as is
the largest capitol or cathedral in the world compared to man’s
size. No savage race has produced architects who could approach
the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has produced
architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for
her young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers,
etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which
communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an
educated and experienced eye for convenience and adaptability.
Y.M. That could be mere instinct.