eve toe TtoeEo O 4 1OHM/181N | Hi Hii 1} « Ants and Some Other Insecis An Inquiry into The Psychic Powers of these Animats With an Appendix on The Pecularities of Their Olfactory Sense By Dr. August Forel Late Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Zurich Translated from the German By Prof. William Morton Wheeler American Museum of Natural History, New York Chicago The Open Court Publishing Company = London Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co, Lid. 1904 ) ha) | eer, of pa 4 COPYRIGHT, 1904 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO /07 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. HEN discussing the ant-mind, we mrust consider that these. small animals, on the one hand, differ very widely from our- selves in organisation, but on the other hand, have come, through so-called convergence, to possess in the form of a social common- wealth a peculiar relationship to us. My subject, however, requires the discussion of so many complicated questions that Iam com- | pelled to assume acquaintance with the work of others, especially the elements of psychology, and in addition the works of P. Huber, Wasmann, von Buttel-Reepen, Darwin, Romanes, Lubbock, my Fourmis de la Suisse, and many others. Since the functions ot the sense-organs constitute the basis of comparative psychology, I must also refer to a series of articles entitled ‘‘Sensations des In- sectes’”’ which I have recently published (1900-1901) in the Rivista de Biologia Generale, edited by Dr. P. Celesia. In these papers I have defined my position with respect to various authors, especially Plateau and Bethe. Very recently Bethe, Uexkull, and others have denied the ex- istence of psychic powers in invertebrate animals. They explain the latter as reflex-machines, and take their stand on the ground of - the so-called psycho-physical parallelism for the purpose of demon- strating our inability to recognise mental qualities in these animals. They believe, however, that they can prove the mechanical regu- larity of behavior, but assume unknown forces whenever they are left in the lurch in their explanations. They regard the mind as first making its appearance in the vertebrates, whereas the old Car- tesians regarded all animals, in contradistinction to man, as mind- less (unconscious) machines. \ 2 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. The Jesuit father E. Wasmann and von Buttel-Reepen are “willing, om the other hand, to accept the inductive inference from ~ analogy as.a valid scientific method. Like Lubbock, the lecturer and othérs, they advocate a comparative psychology of the inverte- brates and convincingly demonstrate the existence of psychic facul- ties in these animals. Wasmann, however, puts a very low esti- mate on the mental powers of the higher vertebrates and, in my opinion, improperly, denies to them any ability of drawing infer- ences from experience when in the presence of new conditions (this alone he designates as intelligence); he believes that man alone possesses an immortal soul (independent of natural laws ?) in addi- tion to the animal mind. It is necessary, first of all, to arrive at some common under- standing concerning the obscure notion ‘‘psychic” in order that we may avoid logomachy, and carrying on theology in the sense of Goethe’s Mephistopheles. Two concepts are confounded in an obscure manner in the word ‘‘psychic’”’: first, the abstract concept of introspection, or subjectivism, i. e., observation from within, which every person knows only, and can know only, in and by him- self. For this let us reserve the term ‘‘consciousness.’’ Second, the ‘‘activity” of the mind or that which determines the contents of the field of consciousness. This has been included without fur- ther ado with consciousness in the wider sense, and thence has arisen the confusion of regarding consciousness as an attribute of the mind. In another place I have designated the molecular wave of activity of the neural elements as ‘‘neurocyme.” We cannot speak of the consciousness of human beings other than ourselves without drawing an inference from analogy; quite as little ought we to speak of a consciousness of forgotten things. The field of our consciousness is constantly changing. Things ap- pear in it and disappear from it. Memory, through association, enables us to recall, more or less directly and with more or less diffi- culty, things which appear to be momentarily absent from con- sciousness. Moreover, both the experience of self-observation and the phenomena of hypnotism teach us experimentally that many things of which we seem to be unconscious, are nevertheless pres- ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 3 ent in consciousness or have been. Indeed, certain sense-impres- sions remain, at the moment of their occurrence, unconscious so far as our ordinary consciousness or superconsciousness is con- cerned, although they can be subsequently recalled into conscious- ness by suggestion. Whole chains of brain-activities, (dreams, somnambulism, or secondary consciousness) seem ordinarily to be excluded from the superconsciousness, but may subsequently be associated by suggestion with the remembered contents of con- sciousness. In all these cases, therefore, what seems to be uncon- scious is after all proved to be conscious. The above-mentioned phenomena have frequently led to mystical interpretations, but they are explainable on a very simple assumption. Let us assume —and this is quite in harmony with observation—that the fields of the introspectively conscious brain-activities are limited by so-called association or dissociation processes, i. e., that we are unable ac- tively to bring them all into connection at the same time, and that therefore all that seems to us unconscious has also in reality a con- sciousness, in other words, a subjective reflex, then the following results: Our ordinary waking consciousness or superconsciousness is merely an inner subjective reflex of those activities of attention which are most intimately connected with one another, i. e., of the more intensively concentrated maxima of our cerebral activities during waking. There exist, however, other consciousnesses, partly forgotten, partly only loosely or indirectly connected with the con- tents of the superconsciousness, in contradistinction to which these may be designated as subconsciousness. They correspond to other less concentrated or otherwise associated cerebral activities. We are bound to assume the existence of still more remotely intercon- nected subconsciousnesses for the infra-cortical (lower) brain- centers, and so on. It is easy to establish the fact that the maximum of our psychic activity, namely, attention, passes every moment from one percep- tion or thought to another. These objects of attention, as visual or auditory images, will-impulses, feelings or abstract thoughts, come into play—and of this there is no doubt—in different brain- regions or neuron-complexes. We can therefore compare attention 4 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. to a functional macula /utea wandering in the brain, or with a wan- dering maximal intensity of neurocymic activity. But it is quite as satisfactorily established that other psychic phenomena external to attention are likewise present in consciousness, though in a feebler condition. Finally, it is well known that all that has been in con- sciousness—even that which is now more, now less, forgotten—is included in the psychic, i. e., in the contents of consciousness. On superficial consideration this appears to satisfy theoretical require- ments. But in fact and in truth there are innumerable processes of which we are feebly conscious for only a scarcely appreciable instant and which anon disappear from consciousness. Here and not in the strong and repeated ‘‘ psychomes”—I beg your indul- gence for this word, with which I would for the sake of brevity designate each and every psychic unit—are we to seek the transi- tion from the conscious to the apparently unconscious. Even in this case, however, the feeble condition of consciousness is only apparent, because the inner reflex of these processes can merely echo faintly in the field of a strongly diverted attention. This, therefore, in no wise proves that such half conscious processes are in and for themselves so feebly represented in consciousness, since a flash of attention is sufficient subsequently to give them definite shape in consciousness. Only in consequence of the diversion of the attention do they lose more and more their connection with the chain of intensity-maxima which, under ordinary circumstances, constitute the remembered contents of our superconsciousness. The more feebly, however, they are bound to the latter, with the more difficulty are such half-conscious processes later associated anew through memory with the dominant chain. Of such a nature are all dreams, all the subordinate circumstances of our lives, all automatised habits, all instincts. But if there exists between the clearly conscious and the unconscious, a half-conscious brain-life, whose consciousness appears to us so feeble merely on account of the deviation of our ordinary train of memories, this is an unequiv- ocal indication that a step further on the remaining connection would be completely severed, so that we should no longer have the right to say that the brain-activities thus fading away nebulously ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 5 * from our superconsciousness do not have consciousness in and for themselves. For the sake of brevity and simplicity we will ascribe subconsciousness to these so-called unconscious brain-processes. If this assumption is correct—and all things point in this di- rection—we are not further concerned with consciousness. It does not at all exist as such, but only through the brain-activity of which it is the inner reflex. With the disappearance of this activity, con- sciousness disappears. When the one is complicated, the other, too, is complicated. When the one is simple, the other is corre- spondingly simple. If the brain-activity be dissociated, conscious- ness also becomes dissociated. Consciousness is only an abstract concept, which loses all its substance with the falling away of ‘‘conscious”’ brain-activity. The brain-activity reflected in the mirror of consciousness appears therein subjectively as a summary synthesis, and the synthetical summation grows with the higher complications and abstractions acquired through habit and prac- tice, so that details previously conscious (e. g., those involved in the act of reading) later become subconscious, and the whole takes on the semblance of a psychical unit. Psychology, therefore, cannot restrict itself merely to a study of the phenomena of our superconsciousness by means of intro- spection, for the science would be impossible under such circum- stances. Everybody would have only his own subjective psychol- ogy, after the manner of the old scholastic spiritualists, and would therefore be compelled to doubt the very existence of the external world and his fellow-men. Inference from analogy, scientific in- duction, the comparison of the experiences of our five senses, prove to us the existence of the outer world, our fellow-men and the psy- chology of the latter. They also prove to us that there is such a thing as comparative psychology, a psychology of animals. Finally our own psychology, without reference to our brain-activity, is an incomprehensible patchwork full of contradictions, a patchwork which above all things seems to contradict the law of the conser- vation of energy. It follows, furthermore, from these really very simple reflections that a psychology that would ignore brain-activity, is a monstrous 6 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. impossibility. The contents of our superconsciousness are con- » tinually influenced and conditioned by subconscious brain-activi- ties. Without these latter it can never be understood. On the other hand, we understand the full value and the ground of the complex organisation of our brain only when we observe it in the inner light of consciousness, and when this observation is supple- mented by a comparison of the consciousness of our fellow-men as this is rendered possible for us through spoken and written lan- guage by means of very detailed inferences from analogy. The mind must therefore be studied simultaneously from within and from without. Outside ourselves the mind can, to be sure, be studied only through analogy, but we are compelled to make use of this the only method which we possess. Some one has said that language was given to man not so much for the expression as for the concealment.of his thoughts. It is also well known that different men in all honesty attribute very different meanings to the same words. A savant, an artist, a peasant, a woman, a wild Wedda from Ceylon, interpret the same words very differently. Even the same individual interprets them differently according to his moods and their context. Hence it follows that to the psychologist and especially to the psychiatrist— and as such I am here speaking—the mimetic expression, glances and acts of a man often betray his true inner being better than his spoken language. Hence also the attitudes and behavior of ani- mals have for us the value of a ‘‘language,” the psychological im- portance of which must not be underestimated. Moreover, the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the animal and human brain have yielded irrefutable proof that our mental faculties depend on the quality, quantity, and integrity of the living brain and are one with the same. It is just as impossible that there should exist a human brain without a mind, as a mind without a brain, and to every normal or pathological change in the mental activity, there corresponds a normal or pathological change of the neurocymic ac- tivity of the brain, i. e., of its nervous elements. Hence what we perceive introspectively in consciousness is cerebral activity. As regards the relation of pure psychology (introspection) to ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 7 the physiology of the brain (observation of brain-activity from with- out), we shall take the theory of identity for granted so long as it is in harmony with the facts. The word identity, or monism, im- plies that every psychic phenomenon is the same real thing as the molecular or neurocymic activity of the brain-cortex coinciding with it, but that this may be viewed from two standpoints. The phenomenon alone is dualistic, the thing itself is monistic. If this were otherwise there would result from the accession of the purely psychical to the physical, or cerebral, an excess of energy which would necessarily contradict the law of the conservation of energy. Such a contradiction, however, has never been demonstrated and would hold up to derision all scientific experience. In the mani- festations of our brain-life, wonderful as they undoubtedly are, there is absolutely nothing which contradicts natural laws and jus- tifies us in postulating the existence of a mythical, supernatural ‘