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^Hu>^

THE BEE
AND EVOLUTION

A STUDY IN ENTOMOLOGY

Br

RT. REV. ALEX. MacDONALD, DJJ

BISHOP OF VICTORIA,
Victoria. B, C.

CONTENTS

Part h—The Book of Nature
and the Book of Genesis.
Part II. — Reason and Instinct.

WILLOWS PRESS

MM HAHLTAIN STUIT

victoria, b. c.

THE BEE
AND EVOLUTION

A STUDY m ENTOMOLOGY

BY

RT. REV. ALEX. MacDONALD, D.D.

BISHOP OF VICTORIA.
Victoria, B. C.

CONTENTS

Part I.— The Booh of Nature
and the Booh of Genesis,

Part II. — Reason and Instinct.

WILLOWS PRESS

2050 HAULTAIN STREET
VICTORIA, B. C.

£'-7 j:. 1

FOREWORD

J. Henri Fabre was born in the early twenties of
I««t century, and died in the second year of the
Great War. He gave his whole long life to ex-
ploration and experiment in one small department
of nature— tae insect world. This, v ith his inborn
aptitude for tlie study, made him the i^eatest ento-
mologist the world has ever known. I am satisfied
that his writings supply ample data for the confu-
tation oi the doctrine of evolution. This little work
is a first essay in that direction.

VICTORIA B. C.
Nov. 13. 1919.

Book of Nature and Book of G: .'•via

PART I

The Book of Nature and the Book of Genetia

In the course of a preface to "The Life of the
Spider" by the famous French entomologist,
J. Henri Fabre, Maurice Marterlinck observes that
Fabre does not attempt o .olve the riddles of
nature "by one of those g .,erally-acceptable the-
ories such as that of evolution, which merely shifts
the ground of the difficulty, and which emerges
from these volumes in a somewhat sorry plight,
after being sharply confronted with incontestable
lacts." It is the purpose of the present booklet to
set forth certain of these facts, and to discuss their
:>earing on the origin of species.

Let me say at the outset that the researches of
J. Henri Fabre in the field of entomology bid fair
to bring r iral science back into its true orbit,
whence it ■ ayed under Darwin and Huxley and
Spencer in the last century. As the earth turns
about the sun and thence dniws its light and
warmth, so does true science turn about the central
truth that there is a God, Maker of heaven and
earth and of all things. Without this Sun of exist-
ences all is darkness — an insolvable enigma to be
everlastingly given up.

Of the denizens of the insect world easily the
most interesting is the bee. It has ong been an

6 Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

inhabitant of our planet. Thousands of years ago
man succeeded in domesticating the little creature
or, at any rate, certain varieties of it, and ever since
tt has slaved for him, making honey not for itself
as Virgil has it.

Sic voi non vobij mellificitii, apes.

But, however remot.>, there was a time when the
first bee appeared upon the earth, when the first
honey was made, when the first hive was built.

How, then, did the bee come into existence? The
great majority of natural scientists since the days
of Darwin answer: By process of evolution from
pre-existing species. "It has come to be mostly
believed by naturalists," says St. George Mivart
(On Truth, p 12), "that new species— new kinds
of animals and plants — have irom time to time
arisen from antecedent kinds, which were different,
by a process of natural generation." Now, by the
very terms of the question, the antecedent kinds
cou.d not have possessed the special characteristics
of the bee, of which the salient ones are the faculty
of extracting honey from flowers and the faculty
of building a hive. These are peculiar to the bee ;
no other creature on this earth possesses them.
Evolution would thus involve a transformation of
species, of which Fabre has this to say in his work
on the Mason-Bees :

"The transformists dogmatize about the past and
dogmatize about the future, but as seldom as pos-
sible talk to us about the present. Transformations
have taken place, transformations will take place ;
the pity of it is that they are not actually taking
place. Of the three tenses one is lacking, the very

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 7

one which dir«ctly interests us and which alone is
clear of the incubus of theory. This silence about
the present does not please me overmuch, scarcely
more than the famous picture of The Crossing of
the Red Sea painted for a village chapel. The
artist had put upon the canvas a broad ribbon of
brightest scarlet; and that was all.

•"Yes, that's the Red Sea,' said the priest, ex-
amining the masterpiece before paying for it.
'That's the Red Sea, right enough; but where are
the Israelites?'

"'They have passed,' replied the painter.

"'And the Egyptians?'

" 'They are on the way.'

"Transformations have passed, transformations
are on the way. For mercy's sake cannot they show
us transformations in the act? Must the facts of
the past and the facts of the future necessarily ex-
clude the facts of the present? I fail to under-
stand."—lb. pp. 243-244.

The fact of the past, or rather the assumption,
as it affects the bee, is that it was evolved from
an organism which neither made honey nor built
a hive. The fact of the future, in like manner as-
sumed by the evolutionist, is that the bee will in
process of time be transformed into an organism
specifically unlike the existing honey-maker and
hive-builder. The fact of the present is that the
bee is the only living organism that makes honey
and builds a hive. How long has this been so?
Ever since the bee appeared upon the earth. And
how long is it since then? God only knows.
Modern science would readily grant millions of

8 Book of Nature and Bool: of Genesis

years, for the bee is comparatively low in the line
of supposed descent. At any rate there is ample
time to allow of the assumed fact of the future
showing some incipient sign of coming to pass. Is
there such sign? No, not a vestige of one.

But, what is more, the facts established by Fabre
go to show that the bee must forever remain essen-
tially such as it is today. By instinct the bee builds
its hive; by instinct the bee selects the element of
honey from flowers ; by instinct the bee does every-
thing that it does. And this instinct is absolutely
unprogressive, absolutely limited in its range, and
absolutely fixed and unchanging as is the law of
gravitation or the movement of the planets. The
bee, of itself, can no more cease to make honey than
the sun can cease to shine; it can no more change
its way of making honey, or its way of building its
hive, than the earth can change its orbit. Why so?
Because it lacks intelligence to plan anew, or devise
new ways of doing what it does; and because it
lacks freedom of choice, and is impelled to act by
a law of its nature, which, like all the laws of nature,
is inexorable and unchanging.

And now for the facts. Fabre made a hole in the
cell of the Mason-bee while the little creature was
still engaged in building. The bee hastened to stop
the breach. "She was busy building and turned
aside a moment to do more building. Her repairs
are the continuation of the work on which she was
engaged."! The experimenter made a hole in the
bottom of the cell after the bee had begun the work
of provisioning. The bee observed the hole but

■ Th* Maton-Beet, p. 1?0,

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 9

went on with its work and let the honey ooze
through. "Once the provisioning begins the cup
[of the cell] is finished for good and all; and come
what may the insect will not touch it again. The
harvester will go on harvesting though the pollen
trickle to the ground through the drain. To plug
the hole would imply a change of occupation of
which the insect is incapable for the moment. It
IS the honey's turn and not the mortar's. The rule
upon this point is invariable. A moment comes,
presently, when the harvesting is interrupted and
the building is resumed. The edifice must be raised
a story higher. Will the Bee. once more a mason,
mixing fresh cement, now attend to the leakage at
the bottom? No more than before. What occupies
her at present is the new floor, whose brickwork
would be repaired at once if it sustained a damage;
but the bottom story is too old a part of the busi-
ness; it is ancient history; and the worker will not
put a further touch to it, even though it be in seri-
ous danger."*

Our experimenter varies his experiment: "Lastly,
I stick into the paste a bit of straw nearly an inch
long and standing well out above the rim of the
cell. The insect extracts it by dint of great efforts,
dragging it away from one side ; or else, with the
help of its wings, it drags it from above. It darts
away with the honey-smeared straw and gets rid
of It, at a distance, after flying over the plane-tree.
"This is where things begin to get complicated.
I have said that when the time comes for laying,
the Mason-bee arrives with a pellet of mortar
wherewith immediately to make a door to the

•lb. p. 17?.

10

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

house. The insect, with its front legs resting on
the rim, inserts its abdomen in the cell ; it has the
mortar ready in its mouth. Having laid the egg, it
comes out and turns round to block the door. I
wave it away for a second, at the same time plant-
ing my straw as before, a straw sticking out for
nearly a centimetre (.39 inch).

"What will the Bee do? Will she, who is so
scrupulous in ridding the home of the least mote of
dust, extract the beam which would certainly prove
the larva's undoing by interfering with its growth ?
She could, for just now we saw her drag out and
throw away, at a distance, a similar beam.

"She could and she doesn't. She closes the cell,
cements the lid, seals up the straw in the thickness
of the mortar. More journeys are uijdertaken, not
a few, in search of the cement required to
strengthen the cover. Each time, the mason ap-
plies the material with the most minute care, while
giving the straw not the least thought. In this
way I obtain, one after the other, eight closed cells
whose lids are surmounted by my mast, a bit of pro-
truding straw. What evidence of obtuse intslli-
gence!'" * * *

"If one sees a rudiment of reason in this Hymen-
opteron intelligence, he has eyes that are more
penetrating than mine. I S'-e nothing in all this
but an invincible persistence in the act once begun.
The cogs have gripped ; and the rest of the wheels
must follow. The mandibles are fastened on the
pellet of mortar; and the idea, the wish to unfasten
them will never occur to the insect until the pellet
has fulfilled its purpose. And here is still a greater

•lb. 18M83.

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 1 1

absurdity: the plugging once begun is very care-
fully finished with fresh relays of mortar. Exqui-
site attention is paid to a closing-up which is hence-
forth useless; no attention at all to the dangerous
beam. O little gleams of reason that are said to
enlighten the animal, you are very near the dark-
ness, you are naught." The author has just de-
scribed in detail the work of the Mason-bee in
pluggmg the door, after the egg has been laid. "No
matter that the larva will perish by this untimely
trowellmg: the moment has come to wall up the
door; the door is walled up."*

Once again, our experimenter drains away the
honey, from one cell in part, from another wholly;
but when the time comes for laying the egg, the bee
lays it whether there is honey in the cell or not.
The mference is obvious; the Bee does not judge
of the quantity of honey by the elevation of the sur-
face; she does not reason like a geometrician, she
does not reason at all. She accumulates so long as
she feels within her the secret impulse that prompts
her to go on collecting until the victualling is com-
pleted; she ceases to accumulate when that impulse
IS satisfied, irrespective of the result, which in this
case happens to be worthless. No mental faculty
assisted by sight, informs her when she has'
enough, when she has too little. An instinctive pre-
disposition is her only guide, an : --llible guide un-
der normal conditions, but hoi- ,sly lost when
subjected to the wiles of the experimenter. Had
the bee the least glimmer of reason, would she lay
her egg on the third, on the tenth part of the neces-
sary provender ? Would she lay it in an empty cell ?

' II.. iip. 134-185.

12 Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

Would she be guilty of such inconceivable maternal
aberration as to leave her nursling without nourish-
ment? I have told the story; let the reader
decide."'

One more experiment. The Mason-bee, when
hatched and now full-grown, will pierce the mortar
dome of its cell, but if you put a bit of paper cover-
ing some little distance above the dome, as Fabre
did, the insect will not even try to "lake its way
through. Instinct impels it to pierce the roof of
its cell, but there stops short. "The Mason-bee
perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of intelli-
gence. And this is the singular intellect in which it
is the fashion nowadays to see a germ of human
reason ! The fashion v. ill pass and the facts remain,
bringing us back to the good old notions of the soul
and its immortal destinies.'"

The bee is furnished with a proboscis for culling
honey from the flowers. It is fitted by nature with
a faculty which serves a definite purpo.se. It must
needs, then, continue to do what it does. The bee
builds its hive with wonderful art. But its art is
rigidly limitet. to the building of a hive. It can do
no other work of art nor can it vary its way of doing
its one work, though it may modify it according
to the materials that are available and the environ-
ment. It must needs, then, go on building its hive in
essentially the same way. The bee by an instinct
of its nature deposits in each cell which it has
stocked with honey an egg out of which is hatched
another bee, and never by any chance any other sort
of creature. The bee, therefore, perpetuates its

• lb. pp. 187-188.
' lb. p. 39.

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

13

kind, and cannot choose but go on perpetuating
its kind evermore. And so it must remain evermore
what it is — a bee. It has an inherent incapacity
of changing itself into another species of insect.
Conformity to type is the law of its nature ; trans-
formation is by its nature banned and barred.

So much for the future of the species. But what
of the past? Whence came the bee? How did the
first bee come into existence? Had it come in the
ordinary course of nature, it would have been
hatched from an egg. Omne vivum ab ovo — Every
living organism from a germ, is the law of nature,
the law of biogenesis. That is to say, this is the
generic law. The specific law is that each species
of living organism comes from the germ of its own
species. So, every bee since the 'irst has been
hatched from the egg of a pre-existing bee. But
in the case of the first, there was no pre-existing
bee. Hence it could not have been hatched.

Treating of the origin of the human body, St.
Thomas says : "As no pre-existing body had been
formed whereby another body of the same species
could be generated, the first human body must
needs have been made immediately by God."' And
again : "The natural generati i of every species is
from some determinate matter. Now the matter
whence man is naturally begotten is human semen.
Wherefore from any other matter an individual of
the human species cannot naturally be generated.
But God alone, the Author of nature, can bring a
thing into existence outside the ordinary course of
nature. Therefore God alone could produce either

la., q, 91, a. 2.
. lb. q. 92, a. 4.

14

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

a man from the slime of the earth, or a woman from
the rib of a man." '

The same is true of the first bee: it must have
been made immediately by God. Gcd is the Author
of the laws of nature. In the first institution of
things, He established these laws. One of them is
that Like begets like: each species propagates its
kind. In the ordinary course of nature, you will
never get a bee but from the egg of another bee.
But might it not have been different in the case of
the first bee? Might it not have come from the
egg of another species? That it did is the assump-
tion of the evolutionist. But it runs counter to
nature's laws. These were in force before the first
bee was born. The pre-existing spei ies whence :he
bee is supposed to have been evolved was itself
subject to the specific law of biogenesis, Like begets
like. From the germ of that species only an organ-
ism of the same species could, in the ordinary course
of nature, have been generated.

Nor can it be said that the germ whence the first
bee came may have been the product of the cross-
ing of two species. For, such hybrid forms are
either sterile or revert to one or other of the original
types. Now the bee is ever fertile and certainly no
hybrid form. In the second place, a cross between
two "good" species always is a blend of the two,
sharing the characteristics of both. But the char-
acteristics of the bee ire, as we have observed, its
faculty of making honey and its faculty of building
a hive, and these two are so bound up together that
they could not be found separate in the supposed
antecedent species, seeing that the very purpose of
the hive is to serve as a receptacle for honey.

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

15

I-et the reader bear steadily in mind that it the
bee had had its origin in the ordinary course of
nature, (which the evolutionist has to assume, since
he excludes the imn-.ediate operation of the Author
of nature), it woulc" necessarily have come from an
egg; for nature knows of no other way in which
any living creature comes into existence. The diffi-
culty, then, remains : How could the first bee have
come from other than a bee-egg, since it is the law
of nature that the bee comes from a bee's egg, and
from no other?

But, even given the egg, there still are wanted
honey and a cell to hatch it. In the course of nature
the bee is never hatched save in a cell and never
can grow unless fed with honey. Whence are these
to come without a pre-existing bee? The faculty of
making honey and the faculty of building cells are
peculiar to the bee, although, in the case of certain
varieties of the wild bee, it is not the mother-bee
that immediately forms the cell: it forms itself
about the young insect, similarly to tiie cocoon of
the silk-worm. But, of course, the mother-bee is
the real efficient cause of the formation of the cell,
though not the direct and proximate. As the origin
of the first bee is what we are seeking to account
for, it is plain that, even giv-^n the egg, it could not
be hatciied. To suppose a pre-existing gatherer of
honey and maker of cells is to suppose the very in-
sect whose origin is in question.

Consider, again, that the first bee must have been
equipped with an apparatus for gathering honey
and an instinct for using it aright, i.e., for making
a judicious seleciion of honey from among the many
elements that are found with it in flowers. Why

16

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

so? Because honey is the food it feeds on and by

crJ^fn 1^7' "," ^°""^- ^'"" ^°"'^ 'he need have
created the facu'ty, ,n such wise that the bee would
slowly acquire it and learn to use it aright; for the
need presupposes the faculty, and the procurine of
necessary food for itself and its offspring would
brook no delay.

Whence then, did the proboscis come, in the first
bee, and the art of using it judiciously in gathering
honey? These now come in the ordinary cour4
of nature from parent bee to offspring: for ev, ry
bee ,s born into the world with this apparatus, and
no bee has to learn how to use it, but possesses the
inborn predisposition to do so, which is known as
instmct. As there is question of characteristics
that are essential to the species and peculiar to it,
they could not have come, in the ordinary course
of nature from creatures that did not themselves
possess them, but must have come immediately
trom the Author of nature.

And there is yet another characteristic which
must have come immediately from God. It is the
faculty of making cells and building a hive The
hive of the common bee shows real architectural
skill Broadly speaking, with the minimum of ma-
terial we have the maximum of capacity. To plan
such a structure man would have to work out a
difficult mathematical problem, which, of course, the
bee never worked out. But no bee ever went abeut
the task of building its hive at haphazard. With-
out having-hid away somewhere in its little brdin
-a plan of the hive, it would waste much wax and
build nothing. So, man himself never achieves any-

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis \7

thing without a plan and a fixed purpose. He may.
indeed, pull down, but he will never build up. If
he set himself to put up a building without a plan, he
will spoil much msterial and labor in vain. But
inan forms the plr.n of his own building. Who.
then, formed that of the bee's. Not the bee itself,
for It lacks intelligence. To say nothing of the in-
contestable proofs of this witnessed and narrated
by Fabre, there is the consideration, that, if the bee,
out of its own head, made the plan of its hive, it
could make othrir plans as well. And one of the
very first things we should expect it to do would
be to contrive some means of saving its honey from
predatory man. The bee, then, is not the architect
of Its own hive. Nor does it learn the art of build-
ing, but is a builder by instinct, or native pre-
disposition. Who. then, planned the bee's hive a.H
implanted in the bee's brain the instinct for build-
ing? Only some intelligence could have done so,
for plan and purpose necessarily imply intelligence.'
Now the living cr-.atures below man, possessing
sense and instinct, lack intelligence. It remains
that the Architect of the universe put the plan in
the brain of the first bee, and that every bee since
the first does but instinctively carry out the plan ;
even as men who are not themselves able to make
plans carry out the plans of others.

It does seem, then, that at this point the theory
of evolution breaks down completely. But there
are many other evidences of its inadequacy to ac-
count for the origin of species. The bee has a host
of poor relations that live upon its riches. The say-
ing of Virgil. So you, O ye bees, make honey, not
for yourselves, bears a wider and deeper meaning

18

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

than even he was aware of. This is revealed in one
of Fabre's fascinating chapters, "The Tribulations
of the Mason-bee.'" The path of the laborious
gatherer and hoarder of honey is beset with para-
sites. "There are some ten of them plotl ng the
ruin of the peaceable and industrious Bee," says this
"incomparable observer," as Darwin termed him ;
"and I do not know them all."" Of the ten two
hold for us a special interest, a species of wasp
known to naturalists as Sapyga punctata, and the
leucospis, which belongs to the Chalcidid family.
Let us first consider the case of the latter.

This parasite, in the words of the author, is "a
magnificent insect, striped black and yellow, with
an abdomen rounded at the end and hollowed out,
as is the back, into a groove to conta'n a long rapier,
as slender as a horsehair, which the creature un-
sheathes and drives through the mortar right into
the cell where it proposes to establish its egg." " It
may be needful to state that t' lason-bees studied
by Fabre build their cells out ^ '• he fine dust of the
macadamized roads of France, t> ting it with their
saliva to make mortar. These cells, of which as
many as fifteen are sometimes built by the bee, are
filled about two-thirds full of honey. Then an egg
is deposited in each, the hole is carefully plugged,
and the entire nest is plastered over with cement,
which one can scarce pierce with a knife, so hard
is it. About the first week in July, in the hottest
part of the day, along comes the leucospis, and be-
gins its work, thus graphically described by our

• lb. ch. 10
■"lb. p. 2S4.
" lb. p. 278.

Book of Nature md Book of Genesis 1')

author :

"The insect sicwiy and awkwardly Mplores the
nest. It feels the surface with its antennae, which
are bent at a right angle after the first joint. Then,
motio.iless, with bent head, it seems to meditate
and debate within itself on the fitness of the spot.
li it here or somewhere else that the coveted larva
lies? There is nothing outside, absolutely nothing,
to tell us. It is a stony expanse, bumpy yet very
uniform in appearance, for the cells have disap-
peared under a layer of plaster, a work of public
interest to which the whole swarm devotes its last
days. If I myself, with my long experience, had to
decide upon the suitable joint, even if I were at
liberty to make use of a lens for examining the
mortar grain by grain and to auscultate the surface
in order to gather information from the sound emit-
ted, I should decline the job, persuaded in advance
that I should fail nine times out of ten and only suc-
ceed by chance." But the leucospis never once fails.
It pierces the rell of the bee, though it sometimes
takes three he .s at its task, and deposits its egg
which hatches out in about a fortnight. It is the
time when 'the bee's grub, all plump and fat and
greasy, has finished its provisions and spun its
cocoon wherein to sleep the slumber akin to death,
the necessary preparation for its future life. Soon
on the sleeper's body lies a nascent grub which
feasts in all security on the luscious fare." " It is
the larva of the leucospis. "Like his prototype the
Anthrax, the Leucospis does not eat the
Chalcidoma-grub, that is to say, he does not break
it up into mouthfuls; he drains it without opening

» lb. p. 2«3.

20

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

it and digging into its vitals. In him again we see
exemplified that marvellous art which consists in
feeding on the victim without killing it until the
meal is over, so as always to have a portion of fresh
meat. With its mouth assiduously applied to the
unhappy creature's skin, the lethal grub fills itself
and waxes fat, while the fostering larva collapses
and shrivels, retaining just enough life, however, to
resist decomposition." And now let us see what
bearing all this has on the matter in hand.

Supposing the evolution of species, all the para-
sites of the bee must have been evolved after it.
They live on the bee; they could not rear their
young without the bee. Were' all the bees in the
world to perish, all the parasites would perish, too.
Whence, then, came they, in the first instance? An
accredited exponent of the theory of evolution, al-
ready cited, tells us they came "from antecedent
kinds, which were diflferent, by a process of natural
generation." The first leucospis, therefore, came
from the egg of an insect which did not possess its
specific characteristics. The supposed ancestor of
the leucospis did not introduce its egg into the ce-
ment cell of the Mason-bee by the arduous process
of piercing it with an ovipositor. When it began
to rear its family, the Mason-bee did not yet exist.
Being of a species that was different, it was not
equipped with a probe or ovipositor, which would
have been useless to it, and which is the special
characteristic of the leucospis. Its larva must have
fed on food other than the grub of the bee, seeing
that this was not yet available, and in any case
required a kind of apparatus for sucking it which is
peculiar to the leucospis.

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

21

Let us go back in thought to the moment when
the first leucospis that ever appeared on the earth
was still in the germ. As we have seen, on the
hypothesis of evolution, it came into being by a
process of natural generation, and a germ is ever
the starting-point of that process. All the charac-
teristics of the species must have been wrapped up
in that germ, awaiting their unfolding: (1) a probe
or ovipositor; (2) an egg capable of developing into
a larva armed with "piercers of exceeding sharpness
and so short that they cannot hurt anything beyond
the skin," to enable it to suck, without killing, the
fat grub of the bee; (3) an egg which will hatch
just in time to get at the bee's grub while it is still
immature, soft and juicy; (4) an unerring instinct
for seeking out the bee's nest and piercing it just
in the right spot and just at the time when the bee's
grub is fit to be food for the leucospis's larva ; (5)
finally, incisors for cutting its way out of the cement
cell of the Mason-bee, and the instinct to use them
aright.

We are told that the new species comes "ironi
an antecedent one, which was different, by a pro-
cess of natural generation." And if you exclude
the immediate agency of the Creator, thin is the
only way it could come; for all species are prop-
agated by a process of natural generation. The
proximate term of this generation — proximate, not
final— is a germ or egg. Now the egg from which
the first leucospis was evolved must needs have
been that of a species which was different — this
by the very terms of the question, for we are seek-
ing the origin of a leucospis before which none ex-
isted, and, of course, that which does not exist can-

A'»:,tST^ I'

22 Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

not have an egg! Here, then, is what the trans-
formist asks us to believe: At a certain stage in
natural history, to be precise, just when the first
leucospis came into being, the egg of an antecedent
species, which was different, suddenly became en-
dowed with the very marvellous characteristics
enumerated above ! Surely this is in flat contradic-
tion to the law of causation, and even to the prin-
ciple of contradiction ; for the egg in question could
not both be the egg of a leucospis and the egg of a
different species at the same time.

And this is not all. The antecedent species
which was different, must have been able to inseri
its egg into the cement cell of the Mason-bee ; for
every leucospis since the first sprang from an egg
which was so inserted, and fed and waxed strong
on the Mason-bee's grub. That species, therefore,
must have become suddenly equipped with a probe
or ovipositor and endowed with the instinct of using
it rightly. Such happenings belong to the realm of
magic, not to that of sober science.

And now a word about the other parasite of the
bee, Sapyga punctata. This creature lays its egg
on the free end of the bee's egg. It opens before
the latter, and the tiny grub, as soon as born, begins
to drain the rival egg, which in twenty-four hours
is but a crumpled bit of skin. Then it feeds upoi.
the honey at its leisure. "Now where are we to
class this Wasp," says our author, "a true parasite
in the strict sense of the word, that is to say, a con-
sumer of others' provisions? Her general appear-
ance and her structure make it clear to any eye more
or less familiar with entomological shapes that she

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 2.^

belongs to a species akin to that of the Scoliac.
Moreover, the masters of classification, so scrup-
ulous in their comparison of characteristics, agree
in placing the Sapygae immediately after the Scoliae
and a little before the Mutillae.

"The Scoliae feed their grubs on prey ; so do the
Mutillae. The Osmia's [bee's] parasite, therefore,
if it really derives from a transformed ancestor, is
descended from a flesh-eater, though it is now an
eater of honey. The Wolf does more than become
a Sheep ; he turns himself into a sweet-tooth.

'"You will never get an apple-tree out of an
acorn,' Franklin tells us, with that homely common
sense of his.

"In this case the passion for jam must have
sprung from a love of venison. Any theory might
well be deficient in balance when it leads to such
vagaries as this."

And the change of menu is but the least of the
difficulties in the way of transformism, as has been
pointed out. A rhange of diet is quite conceivable,
given certain conditions. But a sudden and radical
change in specific faculties and instincts— this is
what the transformist must postulate, and this
X'ature knows nothing of, ar.d bars by her law of
conformity to type.

Darwin's formula, "Infinitesimal steps in gigantic
periods of time," does not fit the facts, and cannot
be made to fit them. Paleontology, or the science
of fossil remains, tells us of numberless extinct spe-
cies, but reveals no transitional forms, no species in
the making. Moreover, in the ca.se of the bee and
its parasites, had they come into existence by a pro-

24

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

cess of evolution, the transition from species that
neither made honey nor fed upon honey would have
had to be sudden, for the young of the bee and the
young ol the bee's parasites have depended on
honey for their very existence from the first.

I have said that the evolutionist must assume that
the bee will in process of time be transformed into
an organism specifically unlike itself. If evolution
is the law of nature, and all species of living organ-
isms have come into being from antecedent species
that were different, the law must continue in opera-
tion. So long as nature exists, nature's laws must
remain in force. Once you put down evolution as
the law of living organisms, you canr t have as
much or as little of it as you like. To say that pre-
existing species were subject to the law, but that
existing species are no longer subject to it, is to
make nature subservient to the exigencies of theory.
It is to play fast and loose with nature and nature's
laws.

Note also that if the theory of evolution fails to
account for the existence of a given species, such as
the bee or the wasp that feeds upon its larva, it fails
absolutely. The theory is that every species of liv-
ing organism now on the earth is derived from one
or two, or at most a few, aboriginal forms, the
higher from the lower in an ast-ending scale.
Plainly, then, the line of descent must be kept un-
broken. If you drive a wedge through it at one
point, the whole line crumples and goes to pieces-
more surely avA more completely than would the
line of battle on either side of the Western Front
have done in the Great War now happily ended,
did it meet vith similar disaster.

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 23

We read in the Book of Genesis that in the be-
ginning "God made the beast of the earth after its
Idnd, and the cattle after their kind, and everything
that creepeth upon the ground after its kind" —
ch. I, V. 25. This is God's truth. True science,
based upon observation and experiment, and "clear"
as Fabre puts it, "of the incubus of theory," will
evermore confirm it. He "who made a weight for
the winds and weighed the waters in measure, gave
a law to the rains and appointed a way to the sound-
ing storms" (Job. 28: 25-26)— He. too, gave each
species its characteristic faculties and implanted in
its nature the instincts which unerringly guide it
in the performance of its allotted work.

And these wonderful instincts, so sure within
their own narrow sphere, so blind and utterly futile
outside of it, serve to keep the species evermore
employed in the lowly tasks once for all assigned
to it. They bar effectually the way of evolution,
and enforce the law of conformity to type. What
if we are not able to define exactly the limits of
species? What if these limits have been narrowed
unduly, and there have been for species mistaken
what were only varieties ? That does but show the
limitations of human knowledge ; it does not touch
the great truth laid down in Genesis, that God made
every living creature after Ics kind. To each spe-
cies that He made He gave a law that it should
increase and multiply, that is to say, He implanted
in each species the instinct to propagate itself. And
this law remains the best test of a real species-
capacity in individuals of interbreeding indefinitely.
iNtan in certain cases obtains crosses even between

26 Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

"good" species, but the process is artificial, and
Nature bans it by cursing the hybrid form with
sterility, compelling reversion to one or other of
the original forms.

So careful of the type she seemi,
So careless ot the jingle lite.

Thus the poet, and truly, for the type endures.
"The individual withers," as the same poet has it,
"and the race is more and more." Each species is
built upon a type, which corresponds to the arche-
typal idea in the Divine Mind. God fashioned His
creatures after the pattern or plan of them that pre-
existed in Him from eternity, even as man, made
m God's image and likeness, fashions every work
of his hands after a pattern or plan. And as con-
formity to plan is the law that man imposes upon
his work, conformity to type is the law that God
imposed upon every living creature. Hence it is
that the lowest forms of living organisms are still
with us. They still survive, exemplifying the true
law of "the survival of the fittest"— those being
fittest that do conform to type.

The law of conformity to type is strikingly con-
firmd by the persistence of these primitive forms.
From seventeen to thirty-five per cent, of the spe-
cies of shellfish in the Miocene period, according to
Lyell, are identical with those now existing, and
from sixty to eighty per cent, of those in the later
Pliocene beds. And plant life is older than animal
life, yet species belonging to the lowest order in
the vegetable world perdure. though here is sup-
posed to have been the starting-point of trans-

Book of Nature and Book of Genesis 27

iormism. If all life has come from a few primitive
forms in the vegetable kingdom, how have the low

types survived?

"And God said: Let the earth bring forth the
green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-
tree yiel-iing fruit after its kind, which may have
seed in itself upon the earth; and it was so"—
Gen. I :II. If men do not gather grapes from thorns
nor figs from thistles, it is because from the be-
ginning each species of plant was made to bear
fruit after its kind, and that the seed which is there-
in continues to reproduce the same kind of plant
evermore. Neither in the Book of Nature nor in
the Book of Genesis, each in its way God's own
Book, has the doctrine of transformism any real
foundation. Time was when reason ruled natural
science and scientific studies. But ever since Dar-
win wrote his Origin of Species, the "scientific
imagination" has been given a free rein. Phaethon,
to borrow Newman's splendid figure, got into the
chariot of the Sun. and the adherents of the old
regime, standing aghast, could but look on, and
watch him down the steep of heaven.
* * *
By way of epilogue, one may essay an answer
to a question which has perhaps been formulating
itself in the reader's mind. Why did God make so
many parasites equipped with special faculties to
prey upon the bee? It is not for us to assign a
reason for what God does. "O the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ;
how incomprehensible are His judgments and un-
searchable His ways!" But we can conceive of

28 Book of Nature and Book of Genesis

some reasons in this case. First of all, it was need-
ful to keep the little creature from increasing and
multiplying unduly. Left entirely to its own de-
vices, it would soon become a nuisance and a pest.
Then, it was in keeping with the bounteous pur-
pose of God that the bee's poor relations should
have a chance of enjoying the sweets of existence
during the little day of life that is theirs. And this
suggests another reason. Here is a valuable moral
lesson for the rich, that they should gladly share
their riches with the poor. He who made the bee
and the bee's parasites has said, "Wo to the rich."
if they fail to do this.

Reason and Instinct

29

PART II.

Reason and Instinct

It will be well to set forth in detail certain of the
facts which Fabre has established under this head.
First of all, he shows that within its own narrow
sphere, instinct equals and even surpasses reason in
cleverness. Of this he brings forward numberless
instances, but one must suffice. The banded Epeira,
a species of spider, constructs a telegraph line be-
tween her cabin and the bush where she snares her
prey. "To save herself from keeping a close watch
that would degenerate into drudgery and to remain
alive to events even when resting vt'ith her back
turned on the net, the ambushed spider always has

her foot on the telegraph-wire Clutching her

telephone-wire with a toe, the spider listens with
her leg; she perceives the innermost vibrations; she
distinguishes between the vibrations caused by a
prisoner and the mere shaking caused by the
wind."'

Side by side with this cleverness there exists a
stupidity truly abysmal. The Lycosa, another spe-
cies of spider, carries her bag of eggs attached to
her with a spinneret. She never leaves it day or
night, sleeping or waking. She resists furiously if
anyone tries to take it from her. But she is quite
incapable of distinguishing her own eggs from
those of another spider, or eiren from a bit of life-

* "The Wonders of Instinct," pp. 203-205.

,V)

Reason and Instinct

less matter. "After depriving the Lycosa of her
eggs, I throw her a bit of cork, roughly polished
with a file, and of the same size as the stolen pill.
She accepts the corky substance, so different from
the silk purse, without a murmur. One would have
thought that she would have recognized her mis-
take with those eight eyes of hers which gleam like
precious stones. The silly creature pays no atten-
tion. Lovingly she embraces the cork ball, fondles
it with her palpi, fastens it to her spinnerets, and
thenceforth drags it after her as though she were
dragging her own bag."*

Even more remarkable is the Pine Processionary,
to which our author devotes a whole chapter. Cer-
tain caterpillars lliat gnaw the pine, move in a pro-
cession, one following the other in a regular string,
with not an empty space between them. Where
the first goes, all the others go. A silken cord laid
along the way leads them from the nest to the
pinery. Fabre manages to produce with this cord
a circuit. For seven times twenty-four hours the
caterpillars "in distress, starved shelterless, chilled
with cold at night, cling obstinately to the silk rib-
bon covered hundreds of times, because they lack
the rudimentary glimmers of reason which would

advise them to abandon it The school most

highly honored today is anxious to find the origin
of reason in the dregs of the animal kingdom. Let
me call its attention to the Pine Processionary." '

Intelligence is elastic; instinct has its limitations
rigidly fixed. Once outside its own sphere, it is

" lb. p. 161.

• lb. p. f2S-U7.

Reaion and Instinct

31

helpless. "The instincts have a calendar of their
own. At the given hour suddenly they awaken;
as suddenly afterwards they fall asleep. The in-
genious become incompetent when the prescribed
period is ended." * The spider of the waste lands
furnishes an instance in point. "Mould a bur-
row roughly representing her own, and she enters
it forthwith. In course of time a bastion is erected
around the orifice ; the top of the gallery is cemented

with silk But place the Lycosa on the surface

of the ground without first shaping a burrow

Demoralized by the absence of an ambush, the
Lycosa hardly vouchsafes a glance at the game
which I serve up. The crickets pass within her
reach in vain; most often she scorns them. She
slowly wastes away with fasting and boredom. At
length she dies.

Because the craft which you were wont to ply
ia forgotten; because the days of patient digging
are past and your poor brain is unable to work
back. To do a second time what has been done al-
ready is beyond your wit. For all your meditative
air, you cannot solve the problem of how to recon-
struct that which is vanished and gone." "

That is precisely where instinct fails. It doesn\
solve any problems. Every problem that the animal
is called upon to solve was solved for it once for
all before it was born. Instinct in itself is a blind
impulse — as blind as the force which drives the
steam-engine or the electric motor under the guid-
ing hand of man. Fabre makes a rent in the web
of the House Spider. She goes on w^ith her work

' "The Life of the Spider," pp. 147-8.

32

Reason and Instinct

as if nothing had happened. "Neither weavers nor
spinners know how to repair their work. Those
wonderful manufacturers of silk-stuffs lack the least
glimmer of that sacred lamp, reason, which enables
the stupidest of darning-women to mend the heel
of an old stocking. The office of inspector of
Spiders' wets would have its uses even if it merely
succeeded in ridding us of a mistaken and mis-
chievous idea."*

Take again the case of the Burying-Beetlcs. "It
is absolute nonsense to speak of their first prepar-
ing the grave to which the body (of their prey) will
afterwards be carted. To excavate the soil, our
grave-diggers must feel the weight of their dead
on their backs. They work only when stimulated
by the contact of its fur. Never, never in this world
do they venture to dig a grave unless the body to
be buried already occupies the site of the cavity.
This is absolutely confirmed by my two and a half
months of daily observations.'"

Instinct is an inborn preoi, position. It is never
acquired. A longish extract from our author,
which has, besides, an interest of its own, will best
serve to show this:

"To the philosophical entomologists I have some-
thing else to say; I have to call their attention to
the consummate knowledge of the insect-killers,
which vies with that of the paralyzcrs. I speak
of the insect-killers in the plural, for the Tarantula
must share her art with a host of other Spiders.
These insect-killers who live on their prey, strike
the game dead instantaneously by stinging the

• Ih. (p. 271).

T The Wonders of Instinct (pp. 86-87).

Rcaion and Instinct

3.)

nerve-centers of the neck; the paralyzers, on the
other hand, who wish to keep the food fresh for
their larvae, destroy the power of movement by
stinjiing the game in the other nervc-ccntcrs. Both
of them attack the nervous chain, but they select
the point according to the object to be attained.
If death be desired, sudden death, free from danger
to the huntress, the insect is attacked in the ueck ;
if merely paralysis be required, the neck is re
spected, and the lower segments— sometimes one
alone, sometimes all or nearly all, according to the
special organization of the victim— receive the dag-
ger thrust.

"Even the paralyzers, at least some of them, are
acquainted with the immense vital importance of
the nerve-centers of the neck. We have seen the
Hairy Amophila munching the caterpillar's brain,
the languedocian Sphe:^ munching the brain of the
Ephippigera, with the object of inducing a passing
torpor. But they simply squeeze the brain, and do
even this with a wise discretion; they are careful
not to diive thtir sting into the fundamental center
of life; not one of them ever thinks of doing so,
for the result would be a corpse which the larva
would despise. The spider, on the other hand, in-
serts her double disk there and there alone; any
where else it would inflict a wound likely to increase
resistance through irritation. She wants a venison
for consumption without delay, and brutally thrusts
into the spot which the others so conscientiously

respect.

"If the instinct of these scientific murderers is
not, in both cases, an inborn t redisposition, in-
separable from the animal. Inu :.;i acquiicd l.abit,

34

Reason and Instinct

then I rack my brain in vain to understand how that
habit could have been acquired. Shroud these facts
in theoretic mists as much as you will, you shall
never succeed in veiling the glaring evidence which
they afford of a pre-established order of things." '
The incapacity of insects to learn anything new
Fabre insists upon over and over again. "The ex-
perience of centuries," he writes ("Social Life in
the Insect World," p. 54), "has taught the Cigale
nothing. With her excellent eyesight she must be
able to perceive these terrible sappers as they ho r
about her, meditating their crime. Too peaceable
giantess! If you see them why do you not seize
them in your talons, crush the pigmies at their
work, so that you may proceed with your travail
in security? But no, you will leave them un-
touched; you cannot modify your instincts, even to
alleviate your maternal misfortunes."

In a later chapter of the same book he tells us of
the imbecility of the bee in the presence of its
hunter, Philanthus. "I have seen it side by side
with Philanthus on the same flower; assassin and
future victim were drinking from the same goblet.
I have seen it stupidly coming to inquire what the
stranger might be, as the latter crouched watching
on the floor. When the murderer springs it is us-
ually upon some bee that is passing before her,
and throws itself, so to speak, into her dutches!
either thoughtlessly or through curiosity. There is
no frantic terror, no sign of anxiety, no attempt to
escape. How is it that the experience of centuries,
which is said to teach so much to the lower crea-
tures, has not taught the bee even the beginning

■ "The Life of tlie Spider."

pp. 7Jr7.

Reason and Instinct ,VS

of apine v.isdom; a deep-rooted honor of the Phi-
lantl.js? Does the bee count upon its sting? But
the unhappy creature is no fencer; it thrusts \vith-

out method, at random The bee is capable of

withstanding its adversary; it can, with a thrust
Oi -ts envenomed needle, kill the would-be killer
Thv. it does not defend itself more skilfully when
!t I ills into the hands of its enemy is due to ignor-
ance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm
And here again arises, more insistently than before
the question I asked but now: how is it that the
Philanthus has learned for purposes of attack what
the bee has not learned for purposes of defence'
To th.s difKculty I see only one replv. the one
knows without having learned, and the other does
not know, being incapable of learning." (pp. 157.

For further passages bearing on the same sub-
ject I would refer the reader to "The Life of the
Spider," pp. 392-400; and "The Wonders of In-
stmct," pp. 49-64 and pp. 82-92. In this last place
the author, addressing the Burying-Beetle. says:
If you had to learn it by experience, to think it
out before practising it, your race would have dis-
appeared, killed by the hesitations of its apprentice-
ship, for the spots fertile in Moles, Frogs, Lizards
and other victuals to your taste are usually grass-
covered."

Another reason why instinct cannot be acquired
habit is its uniformity. Acquired habits vary, but
instinct is the self-same in every member of the
species. Nor can one species inherit its instinct
from another, for its instinct is peculiar to itself

.w

Reason and Instinct

and essentially different from that of any other spe-
cies. But this point will be dealt with more fully later
on. In the meantime, let us consider with our au-
thor, how instinct cannot be the result of chance.
The Eumenes, of the genus wasp, builds its house
of stone and mortar. It scrapes the .Just off a hard
road, mixes it with saliva, and so makes cement.
It selects the material for building in a gravel pit,
pebbles of varying size. "T..e insect weighs them,'
so to say, measures them with the compass of its
mandibles, and does not accept them untl after rec-
ognizing in them the requisite qualities of size and
hardness." ' Here nothing is left to the action of
chance.

On the other hand, creatures endowed with this
wonderful gift of instinct, have not a glimmer of
reason. In the account of his experience with the
Burying-Beetles, the author brings this out con-
vincingly." The whole chapter will well repay care-
ful pel isal. Animals have not even a rudiment of
the faculty of putting this and that together, of
drawing inferences, of proceeding from the known
to the unknown. Many seeming instances of the
exercise of such a faculty have been noted in
animals. But it is always a case of man's project-
ing the processes of his own mind into the brains
of those lower creatures. The broad, indisputable
fact remains that no species of animal, save man
only, makes progress ; and progress results from the
exercise of reason. True, creatures that are guided
by instinct will sometimes vary their mode of do-

• "The Wonders of Instinct, pp. 209-210
'»I1). pp. 82-106.

Reason and Instinct

37

ing things, and make shift with other materia! for
building when the ordinary material fails them.
This, however, does not indicate progress, but is
simply the adaptation of means to an end which is
characteristic of instinct. In an interesting chapter
on "The Economy of Energy," our author traces
all such manifestations of instinct to "the general
law of economy which seems to govern the whole
animal world." "

Like all animals, ants completely lack the moral
sense. That they are void of feeling we gather
from an instance recorded by Fabre. "One morn-
ing I watched two harridans, (spiders) fighting out
their quarrel on the floor. The loser is laid flat upon
her back; the victress, belly to belly with her ad-
versary, clutches her with her legs and prevents
her from moving a limb. Both have their poison-
fangs wide open, ready to bite without yet daring,
so mutually formidable are they. After a certain
period of waiting, during which the pair merely ex-
change threats, the stronger of the two, the one on
top, closes her lethal engine, and grinds the head •
of the prostrate foe. Then she calmly devours the
deceased by small mouthfuls. Now what do the
youngsters do, while their mother is being eaten?
Easily consoled, heedless of the atrocious scene,
they climb on the conquerer's back and quietly take
their places among the lawful family. The ogress
raises no objection, accepts them as her own. She
makes a meal of the mother and adopts the
orphans." "

I will make one more extract. In "The Hunting

"nrambte Bees and Others,'' pp. 213-233.

.'S

Reason and Instinct

Wasps," Fabre subjects to a searching criticism the
modern theory that instinct is an acquired habit,
and. in the light of his ovn first-hand acquaintance
with facts, shows it tc be utterly untenable. I
quote the concluding paragraphs, referring the
reader to the book itself for the whole of his mas-
terly treatment of the subject:

"If, on her side, the Wasp excels in her art, it is
because she is born to follow it, because she is en-
dowed not only with tools, but also with the knack
of using them. And this gift is original, perfect
from the outset; the past has added nothing to it,
the future will add nothing to it. As it was, so ii
is and will be. If you see in it naught but an ac-
quired habit, which heredity ha ids down and im-
proves, at least explain to us why man, who repre-
sents the highest stage in the evolution of your
primitive plasma, is deprived of the like privilege.
A paltry insect bequeaths its skill to its oflFspring;
and man cannot. What an immense advantage it
would be to humanity if we were less liable to see
the worker succeeded by the idler, the man of talent
by the idiot! Ah, why has not protoplasm, evolv-
ing by its own energy from one being into anotner,
reserved until it came to us a little of that wonder-
ful power which it has bestowed so lavishly upon
the insects ! The answer is that apparently, in this
worlti, cellular evolution is not everything.

"For these among many other reasons, I reject
the modern theory of instinct. I see in it no more
than an ingenious game in which the armchair
naturalist, the man who shapes the world according
to his whim, is abk- to take delight, but in which

Reason and Instinct

39

the observer, the man grappling with reality, fails
to find a serious explanation of anything whatso-
ever that he sees. In my own surroundings, I notice
that those who are most positive in the matter of
these difficult questions are those who have seen the
least. If they have seen nothing at all, they go to
the length of rashness. The others, the timid ones,
know more or less what they are talking about.
.\n(\ is it not the same outside my own modest
environment?" — lb. (pp. 385-411).

The bearing of all this on the origin of species
is sufficiently obvious. Man with his intelligence
and moral sense could never have been evolved
from the brute. Nor could there have been a pro-
cess of evolution in creatures that are endowed with
instinct. This latter point has to be brought out
clearly.

Evolution involves the origin of a new species,
a new kind of living organism, from a pre-existing
species that was dilterent. Now the pre-existing
species was possessed of a different set of instincts.
We find species diflterentiated by instincts that are
specifically different. Thus the bee has the instinct
of making honey and building a hive, and is en-
dowed with appropriate faculties for doing this
work. On the other hand, the wasp which preys
upon the bee has the instinct of boring a hole into
the bee's cell so as to feed its offspring on the bee's
honey, and has a set of faculties which enable it
to do this. As instinct has but one plan of action,
and is incapable of devising new plans, and is there-
fore absolutely unprogressive and rigidly confined
to action within its own narrow sphere, it follows

40

Reason and Instinct

that the bee could never cease doing what it does
and could never hand on to its offspring any other
instinct or any other faculties than those that it is
possessed of. The same is true of the wasp, and of
every other creature which is possessed of instinct
and appropriate faculties corresponding to it. The
way of evolution is, therefore, barred in every crea-
ture endowed with instinct.

Heredity is a fundamental principle in biology.
The characteristics of the parent organism are
transmitted to the offspring. Notable among these
characteristics are the instincts proper to the spe-
cies. Each species transmits the instincts that are
peculiar to itself. Thus the Chalcidoma, or mason-
bee, transmits the instinct of making a cell of ce-
ment and storing it with honey; Sapyga Punctata,
the instinct of piercing the bee's cell and robbing
the bee of its store to furnish food for its own off-
spring. In virtue of the principle of heredity,
identically the same instincts continue to be handed
on. But outside of the instincts peculiar to itself,
the creature has only its stupidities. In accordance
with the principle of heredity, therefore, new in-
stincts can never be evolved; and if not new in-
stincts, not a new species, seeing that each species
is possessed of instincts peculiar to itself.

Instinct, though acting on a blind impulse, in-
volves intelligence. It proceeds upon a plan and
works to a definite purpose. But the intelligence
which instinct involves is lot in the creature that
possesses the instinct. The bee is not the architect
of its own hive, nor does the spider itself devise

"■'Tlie Wornlers of Iimtinct," pp. 167-8.

Reason and Instinct

41

the web that it spins so cunningly. It does but
carry out the plan that is given to it. Whence, then,
the plan and purpose discernible in the instincts of
each several species? Not from an antecedent spe-
cies that was different, for each species transmits
its own instincts, in accordance with the principle
of heredity. Not, therefore, by evolution does
instinct come. The intelligence discernible in the
work of creatures endowed with instinct is the em-
bodiment of the Supreme Intelligence who made
the species upon a plan and for a definite purpose.

Science is built up by observation and experi-
ment. When men leave the sphere of observed fact
and enter the region of hypothesis, we have no
longer science but learned guesswork. Such is the
doctrine of evolution— a scaffolding of hypotheses
without any solid foundation in fact. The evolu-
tion of species is assumed, not proved. Certain of
the assumptions that lie back of it, such as a ten-
dency to vary beyond specific limits, the possession
by living organisms of a low grade of intelligence
with the consequent capability of indefinite pro-
gress, are in open contradiction with the recorded
results of scientific research.

Perhaps the greatest service that Fabre has rend-
ered to science lies in his restoring reason to its
rightful place. The evidence that he accumulates
of the gulf that is fixed between sentient life and
rational intelligence is overwhelming. And it all
rests on personal observation and experiment ex-
tending over several decades of years. His treat-
ment of instinct is especially noteworthy. Again
and again in the course of his writings he returns to
this subject. Besides numberless minor referencs

42

Reason and Instinct

and "The Modern Th ^^,"°/*"" "^ ^"'"i°<='."
^ "c Moaern Theory of Instinct " ;« "ti.

Hunting Wasps"; "I„sti„^t and D Lee; ment'^
Bramble Bees and Others" Jpp S2 ?) "Re"
flections upon Insect Psycholoev" in "tI: M
Bees" (pp. ,S8.,S9). JthX ^i" ce h s^S"
leav the'""'"rr P-^"^P°-tion. 'which doefno

Srslvt, w ^''' *° *^'' »"''' t''^°"gh that very
lact, saves It from error" ro iRO'i a j . y

•"The Life of the Spid r " "The En^ '^'"' '"

higher geometry wiruT'know n^S eTrin^^Th"
thing works of itself —j » 1 ''. """?• ihe

instinct [mposed uLn ? '^^i^Petus from an

rp 396^ AnJ ^ """"" ^'■°'" the start "

paths"_"Th; M ' r' "°*'''"«^ °"t^ide those

jjdins. — I he Hunting Wasos " (n 9u\ %r
copous in all m,« "«ps. (p. 2U). Most

I

I

Reason and Instinct 43

stinct has its limitations rigidly fixed • r«,„n 1,

and its voice in th» 7 • V "" *''* ^^ong,
herald Of tretTr„a'\,rraslr^^^^^^ " ''^

Pla g 'v n To it'' th"e' TV"" ""* '^"'^ ^^ ^''^

tween'rearaid 2t nit" s' HeT S"'"" ''^-
dovved with onV!n,i;» J Reason is en-

instinct is maked ?vT.^ """'"* P°""- -"''^
Hence stL'artl is' tJe'.rT ''=' °' *""-
ganism below ^an Not 1 TT """^ *»"

Kt ongin'atld a„;thj;feV''^&^^^^^^^
^^elft^^i^^^^

-fts'a„dU;:,,r' ''"""" '" *"'' -*^' -'^

In the beginning, God^ve mnn'V"'-"'-*'' •^''"•
the birds of the aif ^.^^^.Tr. , dominion over
beasts of the field' ThI \ '' °^ ""^ ""' ^"^ '^e
vested man with this I /v"" "^^"'^^ "«= '"-
the Godlike eft of und! .''."'' ""^ '"^^^ ^^an
reason Bv thJ . ""d«='-f and.ng. the faculty of

first, subduing the earth Jy^ J ^^°'^ ^^^

Sir's.i-iri-v^ 1 .f pr „?2

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