ON THE LATEST FORM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 117 
it differs from human intelligence in degree only, it is in these instances undoubtedly 
the superior. Man may go to school to the spider, the ant, the wasp, and the bee, but 
he can never equal his teacher. Compare the habitations, the nets, and other structures 
of these insects, with those of the lower savages, such as the Hottentots and the native 
Australians, and say which are the more artistic and the more nicely adapted to their 
purposes; especially when we add the necessary qualification, that the insect works 
without any tools except those which are parts of its own body. Man has had bitter 
experience enough in the matters of government and social organization, and the wis- 
dom of thirty centuries has been exhausted in pondering upon the several problems of 
social philosophy ; but he is still unable to form a society which, in point of orderly 
arrangement, harmony, and effective co-operation for the general good, even approaches 
the excellence of a hive of bees. Since the latest form of the Development Theory 
allows no variation to be preserved and perpetuated, except it be an improvement, since 
Natural Selection inevitably kills out every change except it be for the better, how 
comes it that human reason has deteriorated in all these respects ever since it began to 
be built up from the narrow foundations of an insect’s instinct? It is no answer to say, 
that reason is still immeasurably the superior in the number, comprehensiveness, and 
ductility of its endowments, and especially in those powers of adaptation and invention 
by which it is fitted for all emergencies. The question still remains, Why, if it has 
improved in so many respects, has it deteriorated in any ? 
But the difficulty of accounting for the transmutation of instinct into reason becomes 
vastly greater, when it is remembered that a leading characteristic of the former is, that 
it admits of no variation whatever, — that, as far as human observation has extended, 
it is absolutely unchangeable, both in the individual and in the race. Instinct, it is 
true, has a certain degree of pliability, enough to provide for the ordinary and per- 
petually recurrent emergencies of the special occasion for which it was created. Other- 
wise, the faculty would very seldom answer its purpose, or be competent for its destined 
work. Thus, the spider which always fashions a circular web, as it can seldom or never 
find a nearly circular opening in which to suspend it, must be able to change the length 
and direction of the suspending threads, so as to hang the structure easily and eco- 
nomically in an opening of any shape, triangular, quadrangular, or altogether irregu- 
lar, such as it may best find. But the absolute invariability of the instinct appears 
even here, in the fact that the web of this spider is always circular and curiously sym- 
metrical, though so much contrivance is thereby needed to suspend it with proper 
stiffness; and though a triangular web, such as is always spun by an allied species, 
would remove all difficulty and answer every purpose. The range of this pliability, 
