the continuity of evolution which as he states in a private letter to us is "only a beautiful postulate"?
Now there are indeed facts which prove that the Rubicon of reason is not so impassable to animals as Prof. Max Müller makes us believe. Let us hear Noiré on the subject. He explains most logically that man performs his many labors and has become a civilised being only with the help of language, by naming things and handling them in his mind. Noiré says:
"It can be graphically shown, how ideas may represent for man the rôle of things real; how man has acquired the power of combining in his representative faculty the most remote objects, and thereby has been able to accomplish the great miracles of human industry and commerce. But all this would be utterly inconceivable without concepts, which impart to percepts their unity and self-dependence, bring about and multiply their rational connection. Hence also, no animal can ever advance a single step beyond present perceptive representation, can never escape from the constraint with which Nature circumscribes the narrow sphere of its wants. Unfortunately, however, in apparent contravention of this rule, ants to the present day carry on a regular and methodical species of agriculture, keep livestock and domestics like we! Nay, they have been caught in conversations and social entertainments of a quarter of an hour's duration—God save the mark![1]
This passage is full of humor, and the humor is slightly mingled with a comical anger and self-irony. There is a fine theory excellent in every respect worked out in all its details by the Professor and now he finds a few trifles of facts which possess the impudence not to adapt themselves to the theory. "Gott besser's," sighs Noiré, for it is not his fault that the ants accomplish things which they ought not to, and the good Lord is called upon to adapt nature with more rigidity to the Professor's theories.
Is there not an obvious reason why ants stand so high in their performances? Are not ants social beings, more so than any other animal? We are ignorant still of all their means of communication. But that they have some means of communication seems to be an established fact. When ants from different hills but of the
- ↑ The Logos Theory, by Ludwig Noiré. Translated from the German. The Open Court, iii. p. 2196. English translations of Noiré's most important articles concerning the origin of language, have appeared in Nos. 33, 137, 139, 141, 142 of The Open Court.
