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The Soul of the White Ant
The Soul of the White Ant by Eugène Marais is a passionate, insightful account into the world of termites. It is a meticulously researched expose of their complex, highly structured community life.
Originally translated into English in 1937, the quality of research remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published. This illuminating account will not only appeal to those with a scientific interest in termites, but will similarly enthrall readers who are new to their captivating world.
An exceptional feature of his detailed research is the extraordinary psychological life of the termite. While the studies are based in South Africa, the extensive research includes the termites of Magnetic Island, Australia.
The Soul of the White Ant is part science, part mysticism, a sort of manual of pantheism, and a very personal and careful observation of termites as a life form.
Originally translated into English in 1937, the quality of research remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published. This illuminating account will not only appeal to those with a scientific interest in termites, but will similarly enthrall readers who are new to their captivating world.
An exceptional feature of his detailed research is the extraordinary psychological life of the termite. While the studies are based in South Africa, the extensive research includes the termites of Magnetic Island, Australia.
The Soul of the White Ant is part science, part mysticism, a sort of manual of pantheism, and a very personal and careful observation of termites as a life form.
173 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 11, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 22, 2019
As a boy I wondered: What’s so Portuguese about the Portuguese man o’ war? And what is a man o’ war anyway? No one seemed to know. Eventually I learned that a man of war was an old-fashioned naval vessel and that the creature was so named because the gas bladder it uses to float resembles a ship’s sails. I also learned that the Portuguese man o’ war is not a jellyfish, though it looks like one.
In fact it is a siphonophore, which is a composite sea animal made up of tiny multicellular creatures called zooids. These may live independently or band together and take on the functions of various specialized tissues to form a larger organism. I would not recommend touching a Portuguese man o’ war but if you were to break apart a siphonophore, the zooids of which it’s composed may reverse engineer themselves and resume individual lives.
Which brings me (trust me on this) to Eugene Marais and his book on termites. Marais was a South African of French Huguenot descent, a lawyer, a poet, a self-taught naturalist, and a morphine addict. In The Soul of the White Ant he wrote the oddest book of natural history I’ve ever encountered. Originally published in 1925, it reads like a collaboration between David Attenborough and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Marais employs the empirical methods of study one expects of a scientist but he indulges at the same time in the language and speculations of a nineteenth century spiritualist.
Marais has a special fondness for the term “soul,” though he uses it in the Aristotelian sense as the principle of life and growth in a creature, directed toward a specific end. He considers instinct a form of inherited memory. Communication by scent, sound and visual display he describes as means of sending out “waves in the ether.” He speculates that the organs of the human body may have originated as distinct creatures. He thinks that some animals engage in mental telepathy.
But the overriding thesis of Marais’s book is that the termite colony, like the siphonophore, is a composite animal, with a group soul. Individual termites are nothing. The termitary is all. The earthen mound housing the colony corresponds to the epidermis, with pores to regulate internal temperature. The passages within the mound are the arteries and blood vessels. The worker termites are the red blood cells while the soldiers are the white. The fungus gardens in the mound’s interior are the digestive organs. The queen termite is the brain and nervous system of the whole creature.
This is no metaphor for Marais, and his argument (supported by fascinating experiments) is surprisingly good. If you give yourself to it, it may change the way you think about what constitutes a living being. But contemplation of the termitary sends Marais into quasi-metaphysical reveries that are strange to encounter in a scientist. He asks:
“Is there some powerful group soul above and beyond nature which dominates all natural phenomena and directs them to some goal? Searching for an answer in nature seems impossible. If a naturalist is truthful, and not unduly influenced by a desired outcome, then the ability to give a final answer will always be in question. It is possible that we see only a small arc of a gigantic circle. A true understanding of the universal soul lies far beyond our human abilities.”
From what I understand, most of Marais’s work on the “white ant” was confirmed by later scientists. Maeterlinck, the Nobel Prize laureate, unapologetically plagiarized it. The theft ate away at Marais until 1936, when, at a farm called Pelindaba (which in Zulu means “end of the story”), he killed himself with a shotgun.
In fact it is a siphonophore, which is a composite sea animal made up of tiny multicellular creatures called zooids. These may live independently or band together and take on the functions of various specialized tissues to form a larger organism. I would not recommend touching a Portuguese man o’ war but if you were to break apart a siphonophore, the zooids of which it’s composed may reverse engineer themselves and resume individual lives.
Which brings me (trust me on this) to Eugene Marais and his book on termites. Marais was a South African of French Huguenot descent, a lawyer, a poet, a self-taught naturalist, and a morphine addict. In The Soul of the White Ant he wrote the oddest book of natural history I’ve ever encountered. Originally published in 1925, it reads like a collaboration between David Attenborough and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Marais employs the empirical methods of study one expects of a scientist but he indulges at the same time in the language and speculations of a nineteenth century spiritualist.
Marais has a special fondness for the term “soul,” though he uses it in the Aristotelian sense as the principle of life and growth in a creature, directed toward a specific end. He considers instinct a form of inherited memory. Communication by scent, sound and visual display he describes as means of sending out “waves in the ether.” He speculates that the organs of the human body may have originated as distinct creatures. He thinks that some animals engage in mental telepathy.
But the overriding thesis of Marais’s book is that the termite colony, like the siphonophore, is a composite animal, with a group soul. Individual termites are nothing. The termitary is all. The earthen mound housing the colony corresponds to the epidermis, with pores to regulate internal temperature. The passages within the mound are the arteries and blood vessels. The worker termites are the red blood cells while the soldiers are the white. The fungus gardens in the mound’s interior are the digestive organs. The queen termite is the brain and nervous system of the whole creature.
This is no metaphor for Marais, and his argument (supported by fascinating experiments) is surprisingly good. If you give yourself to it, it may change the way you think about what constitutes a living being. But contemplation of the termitary sends Marais into quasi-metaphysical reveries that are strange to encounter in a scientist. He asks:
“Is there some powerful group soul above and beyond nature which dominates all natural phenomena and directs them to some goal? Searching for an answer in nature seems impossible. If a naturalist is truthful, and not unduly influenced by a desired outcome, then the ability to give a final answer will always be in question. It is possible that we see only a small arc of a gigantic circle. A true understanding of the universal soul lies far beyond our human abilities.”
From what I understand, most of Marais’s work on the “white ant” was confirmed by later scientists. Maeterlinck, the Nobel Prize laureate, unapologetically plagiarized it. The theft ate away at Marais until 1936, when, at a farm called Pelindaba (which in Zulu means “end of the story”), he killed himself with a shotgun.
October 15, 2018
This book is almost intolerably gross but at the same time unbelievably profound. The author does not write in a dry scientific manner but often elevates his observations to the philosophical plane.
One of the key topics he mentions is the "compound animal" which is the colony of termites, and although we can grasp this concept, it is another thing to read his explanations and reasons for why he is convinced that the mound itself is the animal, functioning like a body with a brain, responding to its state and needs proactively.
If you can stomach, or even skip over the pictures (I did), it speaks to an aspect of nature that is little understood, which Marais uncovers with a sense of spirit and genuine desire to know.
I know its a tough sell, but I really do recommend this book!
One of the key topics he mentions is the "compound animal" which is the colony of termites, and although we can grasp this concept, it is another thing to read his explanations and reasons for why he is convinced that the mound itself is the animal, functioning like a body with a brain, responding to its state and needs proactively.
If you can stomach, or even skip over the pictures (I did), it speaks to an aspect of nature that is little understood, which Marais uncovers with a sense of spirit and genuine desire to know.
I know its a tough sell, but I really do recommend this book!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews