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Published in a sturdy hardcover format by Jonathan Ball Publishers, known for quality Africana and natural history titles, The Soul of the Ape & The Soul of the White Ant is suited to readers interested in animal behaviour, the history of science, philosophical explorations of mind, and classic South African writing.
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The Soul of the Ape & The Soul of the White Ant by Eugène Marais (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1990) is a classic South African philosophical and natural history work that brings together two seminal essays by one of the country’s most original scientific writers. This hardcover edition was published in 1990 by Jonathan Ball, making these important writings accessible to a new generation and reaffirming Marais’s reputation as an early thinker in animal behavior, psychology, and human evolution.
Eugène Marais (1871–1936) was a South African lawyer, poet, naturalist, and philosopher whose unconventional life informed his keen observational style. The Soul of the Ape explores Marais’s reflections on primate behaviour and the nature of mind and consciousness, drawing on careful field observation and speculative interpretation at a time when such ideas were little discussed in scientific literature. Likewise, The Soul of the White Ant (termite) offers one of the earliest extended studies of social insects, interpreting the structure and cooperative life of termite colonies in philosophical as well as biological terms. Both essays were groundbreaking in their day for treating animal behaviour as more than mechanistic instinct, emphasising continuity between human and animal experience.
This 1990 edition pairs these two essays — often published separately — into a single volume that honours their thematic resonance. Marais’s writing is characteristically lyrical, philosophically reflective, and deeply curious about life’s complexity. His work laid important early groundwork for later ethology and comparative psychology, even as he approached his subjects with a poet’s sensitivity as well as a naturalist’s eye.
Published in a sturdy hardcover format by Jonathan Ball Publishers, known for quality Africana and natural history titles, The Soul of the Ape & The Soul of the White Ant is suited to readers interested in animal behaviour, the history of science, philosophical explorations of mind, and classic South African writing. It remains a treasured work for its blend of scientific insight, personal reflection, and literary expression.
