It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants

The words “It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits,” were spoken by Lewis Thomas, a biologist and essayist who gazed at nature with the eyes of both a scientist and a poet. In these words, he saw in the humble ant colony a reflection of something far greater: the mysterious unity that emerges when many small parts move as one. This was not merely a description of insects—it was a revelation about the nature of intelligence, of cooperation, and of the unseen harmony that binds living things together.

In the world of the ants, each creature seems insignificant—blind, small, and bound to a narrow task. Yet when they gather by the thousands, they form a single living entity, pulsing with purpose. To the untrained eye, it may look like chaos, but to one who watches closely, as Thomas did, there is order, rhythm, and intent. The colony becomes a mind made of many minds, an organism whose thought is distributed through countless bodies. Here, Thomas saw a mirror to the human condition. We, too, are many—and yet one. Our civilizations, our cities, our nations, all arise from this same divine principle: that in unity there is intelligence, in cooperation, creation.

History has often revealed the power of collective thought. Consider the building of the Great Wall of China, a feat not of one emperor’s dream alone, but of generations of laborers whose sweat and endurance built an immortal monument. Like the ants, they were countless and unseen, yet together they moved as a single force across mountains and deserts. Their unity gave birth to something no single mind could have conceived or completed. Here lies the essence of Thomas’s insight: that the greatness of life is not always found in the individual hero, but in the network of souls working together in silent understanding.

Yet there is a deeper wisdom hidden in this observation. The “live computer” of the ants is not guided by pride or competition—it is governed by instinct, by the invisible pulse of cooperation. Each ant acts not for itself but for the whole, and in doing so, it transcends its smallness. So too must humankind learn this lesson. When we act only for ourselves, we are fragments; when we act for the common good, we become something vast, luminous, and enduring. The hive, the city, the community—these are not prisons of the soul, but amplifiers of it.

And yet, we must also beware. For in the merging of many minds, there lies both creation and destruction. A crowd may build a temple—or start a war. The collective intelligence that Thomas described is powerful, but power without wisdom is perilous. Therefore, let us temper our unity with conscience. Let our cooperation be guided not by blind instinct, but by compassion, by reason, by love. For when we join our minds in harmony and purpose, we do not merely resemble the ants—we approach the divine order itself.

Look around, and you will see this truth alive in every corner of human endeavor. In the surgeons gathered around an operating table, moving as one heartbeat to save a life. In the engineers who raise bridges and satellites, connected by the invisible web of shared purpose. In the volunteers who bring food to the hungry, hope to the weary. They are the “crawling bits” of our own living computer—the collective spirit of humanity, calculating not for gain, but for good.

So remember, children of the earth: you are not alone, nor are you small. You are a cell in the great body of humankind. Your actions, your thoughts, your kindness—all ripple through the unseen web that joins us. Work not in isolation, but in harmony. Build not for yourself, but for the whole. And when you do, you will feel, as Lewis Thomas did, the living intelligence that stirs beneath the surface of life—the vast, breathing spirit that thinks, plans, and dreams through us all.

Thus, the lesson of the ants becomes the lesson of the ages: to unite is to awaken, to cooperate is to create, and to see the whole in the many is to glimpse the mind of nature itself.