544 ANTS. 



a remarkable fact that tlie scientific theories of instinct keep oscillating 

 back and forth between the intclliyent and the merely intelligible, that 

 is tn say, between the likening of instinct to a 'lapsed' intelligence 

 ami the reduction of instinct to a pure mechanism. Each of these two 

 explanatory >vstems triumphs in its criticism of the other, the former 

 when it proves to us that instinct cannot be a pure reflex, the latter 

 when it asserts that instinct is something different from intelligence, 

 even when this lias lapsed into the unconscious. Does not this mean 

 that we have here two symbolisms equally acceptable from certain 

 points of view, and from other points of view equally inapplicable to 

 their object?' It is, in fact, quite futile to attempt a phylogenetic 

 derivation of the automatic from the plastic activities or rice versa, 

 for both represent primitive and fundamental tendencies of living pro- 

 toplasm, and hence of all organisms. As instinct, one of these tenden- 

 cies reaches its most complex manifestation in the Formicidae, while 

 the other blossoms in the intelligent activities of men. 



