Referring to the battle of the red ants with the black ants, Thoreau remarks,
I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden....I have not doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors....
Thoreau likens the ants to Achilles who comes to avenge his friend Patroclus; the wounded ants, he wonders, may spend their last days at the Hotel des Invalides, a veterans' hospital in Paris where Napoleon is buried. Thoreau comments that he had had his feelings
excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door....
A keen observer of nature, Thoreau perceives the interconnection of all creatures, man or otherwise. Just as man struggles against other men, so does the red ant struggle against the black, with every bit as much intensity as man. It is, clearly, a part of life to have the battles of thee stronger against the weaker; animal instincts do exist in man, and there will be a struggle for dominance. But by the end of Chapter Twelve of Walden, in which this passage is located, Thoreau concludes that both the animal and spiritual natures coexist in animals and animals experience no conflict between the two, while men do.
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