The natural history of ants : from an unpublished manuscript in the archives of the Academy of Sciences of Paris / by René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur ; translated and annotated by William Morton Wheeler.

  • René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of ants : from an unpublished manuscript in the archives of the Academy of Sciences of Paris / by René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur ; translated and annotated by William Morton Wheeler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    insects that know how to vary their procedure when this is required by the circumstances. It is true, nevertheless, that every species of insect has, so to speak, only its own particular dexterity by means of which it appeals to our admiration. But even if the insects performed actions more surprising and more varied, or series of actions, like our own, they would yet gain nothing in the estimation of those who are determined to refuse them souls. The metaphysics of a savant [Leibnitz], illustrious in so many different fields, has convinced him that we ourselves, viewed from the out¬ side, act as pure machines, that every human body is a machine constructed to perform a series of movements and actions, and that this series is what the soul, destined to inhabit the body, wills it to perform as long as it is thus inhabited.”* Flourensf believed that there are two kinds of instincts, moral ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ mechanical instincts, ’ ’ the former being what we now call the instinct feelings (emotions, cravings, appe¬ tites), the latter the instinct actions of a mechanical (chain- reflex) pattern. These he regarded as the instincts proper, and he gave Reaumur credit for having first critically studied them, whereas he believed Buffon to be the first to recognize the moral instincts, which he also regarded as constitut¬ ing the [disposition, character, or naturel of the animal. While, in my opinion, Buffon is here undeservedly given credit for first recognizing psychical phenomena that were well known even to Aristotle, the scholastics and Descartes, I would agree with Flourens when he says that “no one ever so little understood instinct properly so-called as Buf¬ fon.” This is evident from several passages in the latter’s Discours sur les Animaux at the beginning of the fourth vol¬ ume of the Histoire Naturelle (1753), passages undoubtedly written with the intention of undermining Reaumur’s repu- * See also the passage in Réaumur’s letter of Feb. 13, 1756, to Haller on Condillac’s conception of the animal soul and the remark: “The Abbé Condillac’s explanation of instinct would please me if, unfortunately, I did not observe that very instinct acting on innumerable occasions before it could be acquired by repeated acts. This author’s work on the animals has been recently attacked by Abbé, formerly Father de Lignac in such a manner as to make it difficult to defend,” etc. t Jourti. des Savants, i860, loc. cit.y and De l'Instinct et de VIntelligence, etc., loc. cit.
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