the next day onwards, all work together. In four days the pact is sealed; the pratenses disgorge food to the sanguineae. At the end of a week, Forel transports them to the neighbourhood of an abandoned ant-hill. They settle in, helping one another in the house-moving, carrying one another, and so forth. No more than a few isolated individuals of the respective species, irreconcilable nationalists no doubt, keep up their sacred enmity, and end by killing one another. A fortnight later, the mixed community is flourishing; perfect concord prevails. The summit of the ant-hill, which at ordinary times is covered with pratenses for the most part, reddens with the martial sanguineae directly danger threatens the common state. Next month, Forel, carrying the experiment a stage further, went to the old nest for a number of the pratenses and put them down just outside the hill of the mixed community. The newcomers promptly fell upon the sanguineae. But these latter defended themselves without animosity, merely knocking the aggressors head over heels, and then letting them alone. The pratenses could not make it out. As for the other pratenses, those belonging to the mixed community, they avoided their sometime sisters, would not fight with them, but carried the pupae into the nest. The hostility was all on the side of the newcomers. Next day some of them had been admitted as members of the mixed community, and ere long relations were permanently established on a peace footing. Not in a single instance did the pratenses of the mixed community join with the newcomers to attack the sanguineae. The alliance between pratenses and sanguineae was stronger than the racial brotherhood of the pratenses; the enmity between the two hostile species had been permanently overcome.[1]
⁂
Such examples suffice to show how grave is the mistake of those who believe that instincts are quasi-sacred, and who, after they have included the fighting instinct in this
- ↑ Op. cit. pp. 266–273.
