THE UNSEEN GOAL 271 



sion of possible intruders; and so on. It is no 

 simple performance but a whole bag of tricks. The 

 sequence is quite intelligible to us who see the end; 

 but has the succession of events often requiring 

 toil and trouble any significance to the performers ? 

 If it has no significance, how then did it evolve 

 and why is it persisted in? If it has significance, 

 how is that gained if the performers do not see the 

 result of their labors? 



Some of those who have thought over this prob- 

 lem have pointed to men who spend themselves 

 in working towards achievements which cannot be 

 realized in their day and generation. But the 

 analogy does not help us, for the cathedral of 

 Burgos, or the great afforestation, or the Chinese 

 Encyclopaedia is completed as an ideal in the minds 

 of the human workers and is built up of elements 

 previously actualized in experience. But the digger- 

 wasps have had no experience bearing upon off- 

 spring. It is said that beavers sometimes dig a 

 short-cut canal right through a large island amid- 

 stream, thus lessening the distance for transporting 

 " logs," and such a task must engage the energies 

 of the workers for a long time before there is any 

 reward. For the canal does not justify itself until 

 it is open at both ends. But such a case is not 

 enigmatical like that of our insects, since making the 

 island-canal is but an interesting extension of the 

 kind of labor that finds immediate justification 

 in the everyday life of the beaver. 



Part of the answer to the riddle is to be found 



