Still it cannot be denied that a great many instances have been given—noticeably in the case of “_our_ ants” by Sir John Lubbock[65]—in which these paragons of insects have behaved very stupidly, or shall we say—for why should a creature that cannot be intelligent be stupid either?—with great “psychic _rigidity_”? Certainly such contradictions are very puzzling, but I would suggest one way of trying to estimate better the rigid type of ant intellect, which I believe to be absolutely new, and that is to compare it not with one’s own brain—or Darwin’s—but with that of a rigid type of person. It is wonderful what a difference this might make in our conclusions. An ant, for instance, that is unable, under some special circumstances, to get a thing down into its nest, because it persists in holding or pulling it, in the way it has always been accustomed to, or another that would rather be blown into the water along a known road than leave it for a new one, makes a poor figure in presence of the seven sages, or amidst a circle of senior wranglers mentally called up for its confusion; but we should think, rather, of some pin-headed servant-maid, setting an article of furniture each morning in the place that, with evident intention, you have removed it from overnight, or making up a larger and larger fire as the weather gets warmer and warmer. One should think of the obstinacy with which many people cling to old habits which changed times have made useless, or even harmful, and of how numbers not only prefer inferior things they are used to, to the most decisive improvements, but hate and revile such improvements as though they were undeniable evils. Instances will occur to everyone. I would rather not mention any for fear of alienating nine out of every ten of my readers. We should think, also, of savages or primitive, slow-moving peoples. What a great unadaptability, for instance, did the Matabele show in their methods of encountering our countrymen during the war, and throughout the rising; as also in that rising itself, since it was against all those well-known blessings which our empire confers upon savages.[66] It is to these less exalted levels of human faculty that we should look when we seek to compare an ant’s mind—when out of its usual set track—with our own, if we wish to do the ant any justice. That we pursue an opposite plan is my own explanation of many a partial verdict. To every experimenter in these directions (who should happen to ask my advice) I would say, first, “Do you know, or have you ever known, a really silly person?” and on his beginning, at once, with “Yes, Mrs.” or “Miss” (as the case may be), I would strike in peremptorily thus: “Then keep _her_—not Newton—in your mind as a standard of comparison.”