20 .INTRODUCTION TO NEUROLOGY 



The honey-bee leads a more free and varied life. Instead of 

 passively and blindly waiting for such bane or blessing as fate 

 may bring, she hurries forth, strong of wing and with senses 

 alert, to gather the daily measure of honey and pollen. The 

 senses of touch, sight, and smell open realms of nature forever 

 closed to the plant, and enable her to seek food in new fields 

 when the local supply is exhausted, as well as to avoid enemies 

 and misfortunes. With the approach of the storm, she flies to 

 shelter in a home which she and her sisters have prepared with 

 consummate skill. Yet in this provision for the future in hive 

 and well-stocked honeycomb there is little evidence of intelli- 

 gent foresight or rational understanding of the purposes for 

 which they work. Though so much more highly organized than 

 the plant, the honey-bee is to a very large extent blindly follow- 

 ing out the inborn impulses of her hereditary organization and 

 she has no clear understanding of what she does, much less why 

 she does it. There is some evidence of intelligent adaptation in 

 her behavior, but the part played by this factor in her life as a 

 whole is probably very small compared with the blind inborn 

 impulses which dominate most of her activities. Like the plant, 

 the bee's reactions are determined chiefly by the past evo- 

 lutionary history of the species, which has shaped the innate 

 organization of the body and fixed its typical modes of re- 

 sponse to stimulation. But the bee lives much more in the 

 present than does the plant; that is, she can vary her behavior 

 much more widely in response to the needs of the moment. As 

 for the future, she knows naught of it. 



The farmer's boy whistles as he goes about his work. He, 

 too, has a certain innate endowment, including the whole 

 range of his vegetative functions, together with an instinctive 

 love of sport and many other inborn aptitudes. This is his 

 inheritance from the past. By these instincts and appetites he 

 is, as Dewey says, "pushed from behind" through the per- 

 formance of many blindly impulsive acts. He is a creature of 

 the present, too, his whole nature overflowing with the joy of 

 living. But he also looks into the future and hastens through 

 the daily tasks that he may obtain the coveted hour of sunset 

 to fish in the brook. He flicks off the heads of the daisies with 

 his whip-stock and remarks in passing, "This meadow is 



