46 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



occur completely and purposefully the very first time they 

 go on in the individual. Might not there be another point 

 of similarity ? Morphogenetic processes, as we know, are 

 liable to be regulated on the largest scale : disturbances of 

 the organisation or of the morphogenetic process itself are 

 followed by atypical processes leading again to the typical 

 result. Are there any true regulations known among 

 instincts ? 



Eegulations in instincts, of course, would hardly be ac- 

 cessible to observation if there were not any visible effects of 

 the instinctive activity : but that does not happen very often. 

 Eegulation occurs, in fact, in all cases of so-called technical 

 or artistic instincts, as known among birds, among spiders 

 and among bees, ants, and some other insects. The in- 

 stinctive activity of these animals ends in a certain specific 

 state of the medium. Let us disturb the state, say of a 

 nest or a bee's hive, let us change the material offered to a 

 bird for its nest, and let us see what will happen. 



Unfortunately not a single experiment except one has 

 been carried out with the special purpose of determining 

 the kind and degree of regulability of instinctive movements 

 as such. Such knowledge as we have has been gained almost 

 entirely in the field of so-called natural history, and without 

 a full analytical discussion. 



It is important to notice once more at the very beginning, 

 that we are not dealing here with the possibility of a modi- 

 fication of instinctive life by so-called "experience." Our 

 question is this : Are instinctive acts liable to regulative 

 modifications in the same manner, complete and purposeful 

 from the beginning, as are embryological processes ? 



Bees are known to repair the cells of their honeycomb 



